Rewind to the beginning
by Dreamsnake
Summary: When hunting is the family business, it's a tough gig. Dealing with what's in your own head? Now that's a whole new level. Digging into the Winchesters' psyche, set around and between the episodes of series one.
1. Chapter 1: The day John left

**Rewind to the beginning**

 **1\. The day John left.**

 **(Pre-pilot.)**

 **.**

Dean is alone. The state of being alone is familiar now, has become overly familiar during the last months and years.

He waits until the heavy rumble of the GMC fades into the distance, taking with it the whisky-bruised dark eyes and solid presence that keeps him grounded. He shuffles his feet, the grit of the parking lot grating under the soles of his boots as the silence moves in. It presses around him, magnifying the dull thump of his heartbeat in the empty cage of his ribs. Dean swallows, dry tongue catching on the roof of his mouth as he rubs suddenly numb fingertips against the leather of his jacket cuff.

Alone. Again.

The sky above him is huge, oppressive, and he backs up a couple of paces until he feels the solid bulk of the Impala behind him, the chill of metal cool through his jeans. He breaths in then, a hard suck of air, the first since the GMC growled into life. It makes his ears buzz, his vision pulsing with the quick rush of oxygen.

He slides quickly into the driver's seat, slamming the door with an injured squawk of metal, fights briefly and loses the battle to keep his eyes away from the empty seat beside him. There is a scattering of dust particles on the leather, as though whoever keeps the car interior clean doesn't wipe that seat. Perhaps it doesn't need wiping because it's always empty. Perhaps the person cleaning doesn't want to wipe away anything important, like the last remaining trace of Sam engrained in the leather.

Dean pulls an enormous bag of M&Ms from the glove box and deposits its plastic bulk on the empty seat. It is too small of course, and it definitely doesn't have ridiculously long legs or brown bangs, but it's better than nothing. He takes out a tape and drops the case onto the seat, leaving it open like a gaping mouth so that it takes up more space.

A quick flick of long fingers, dull silver catching the light, and rock music floods out of the speakers. If he turns it up far enough that the right-hand speaker begins to vibrate a little, if he guns the engine like so, then the silence is driven back, kept at bay just outside the windows.

Dean presses the gas pedal, leaves a fan of grit behind him as his baby responds, bouncing over the lip of the parking lot and onto the highway. He winds the window down an inch, leans his knee up the door and lets the revs climb up to a steady growl.

They speed into the gathering darkness, the Impala anchoring him to the earth as she devours the highway. His fingers tap out a beat against the wheel as he lets the soothing rumble of the engine spread through his frame. He has a job to do. While there is a hunt, there is no need to think about empty seats and silence.

Dad has something he needs to do alone. He'll call soon. Or text. Or something.

In the meantime, Dean will hunt and drink beer and shoot pool and lose himself deep in the warmth of a willing girl and try to forget for a few minutes that he is alone.

Chapter 2... ' The Stanford decision' follows soon


	2. Chapter 2: The Stanford decision

**2\. The Stanford decision.**

 **(Pilot.)**

.

Dad is somewhere close to Jericho, checking out some disappearances on a stretch of two lane blacktop. He's been gone a week already and he isn't picking up his messages.

Dean is anxious. Not outright nail chewing, climbing the walls worried, but anxious enough that he keeps checking his cell, concerned enough that he nearly misses a vital clue in New Orleans, nearly gets himself zapped good and proper with a voodoo curse.

He tells himself to stop being an ass. Dad does this; he's always done this. Dean has spent years worrying himself sick about John not answering his cell. He knows the score; sometimes there's no reception or no time because you're on the trail of something slippery. He doesn't know why this occasion feels different, but it just does and it bothers him more than he wants to admit.

He gets on with the job and a few days later he finds the stash of voodoo ritual items unearthed by some teenagers. Then he tracks down and destroys the old hex bags a kid is using to even the odds in high school. He convinces himself that it's nothing at all to do with another unanswered voice message when he forgets that there's still a cursed graveyard corpse on the loose. It jumps him when he's distracted, but he manages to put it down permanently, despite not being able to focus properly through the blood streaming into his eyes.

He spends a few days drifting in and out of consciousness, vomiting and fighting vertigo in a filthy motel room before he can see straight enough to check his cell again. Nothing.

Then he really does start to worry. He makes a few calls but the grapevine is quiet, at least as far as John Winchester is concerned. Suddenly the sense of unease is undeniable and the feeling of loneliness overwhelming.

He drives in the general direction of Jericho and somehow keeps the Impala on the road, or maybe she keeps him on the road; he isn't sure. But when his head finally clears properly, he realizes he's missed his exit.

He pulls off at the next opportunity to swing her around and nearly takes out a bush when his cell picks up a voicemail. It's a broken message from his Dad; it's cut through with static and poor reception but he can make out enough of the warning to cause his gut to clench.

The overlying static on the message sounds suspiciously like EVP. Dean makes a fast detour to a local college with a good music department and uses his youthful looks, considerable charm and general air of quiet desperation to gain access to their GoldWave-equipped computer, to finish off that vital exam submission of course.

He records the result on his hand-held voice recorder and now he's got two problems, because John's warning message is overlaid with ghost talk.

His first instinct is to burn rubber to Jericho, but his mind won't let go of John's words..."We're all in danger." All. That means Sam too.

The passenger seat looks even more empty than normal and reminds Dean of the gaping hole left by a missing tooth. If there's danger threatening Sammy, then Dean needs to go to Stanford first and it's nothing to do with wanting to see his brother like a drowning man wants oxygen.

So he hits the gas and hightails it to Palo Alto. He stops ten miles short and takes a few minutes to freshen up in a gas station washroom, 'cause there's no way he's going to see his brother face to face after two years, not when he's looking and smelling like two day old roadkill.

There's a close call when he near as damn it shoots a couple of teenagers on the way back to the Impala, because he's forgotten it's Halloween; why the hell do kids want to parade around dressed like zombies anyway? He passes it off as a joke and they're too wasted to care, so in record time he's pulling up outside Sam's apartment.

Part of him is insisting that he's just going to check on Sam and then leave. But his body betrays him, makes him a little clumsy, because there's no way a Stanford-softened Sam would hear Dean Winchester breaking and entering if he didn't want to be heard.

And then it's fists and feet and even before he sees the other figure clearly, Dean knows it's his brother. And then he has him pinned and the warm skin of Sam's throat is beneath his fingers and at last some of the tension between his shoulder blades eases, tension that's been locked there since "I'm going to college" and "Stay gone" slashed through Dean's chest more effectively than any Wendigo claw.

Chapter 3 soon...

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	3. Chapter 3: Jess

3\. Jess

(Pilot/Wendigo)

.

From the minute Sam turns away from him and walks to stand at Jess's side, Dean knows he's no longer the most important person in Sam's life. He's not sure why it's a shock, because you'd think that someone 'staying gone' for so long would've already delivered that message loud and clear.

In a split second moment of clarity, Dean wonders if perhaps he always knew that Sam had moved on in more ways than just location, but just chose not to think about it. Of course, it's much too late to think about it now and he has to take the emotional hit head on and in full view of his brother.

The hurt of it kind of winds him, but he manages to get a hard mask in place as he turns to face the challenge in his kid brother's eyes. And all the time a cold, nauseous feeling in his stomach is telling him that all those months when he was missing Sam, his brother was setting himself up with a new life, without Dean in it, and maybe he wasn't missing Dean at all.

Dean squares his jaw and puts it aside because he really needs to talk to Sam alone. It's about then that he realizes he hasn't come to Stanford to just check on Sam; what he wants is for his brother to go with him, just drop everything and go with him to look for Dad.

Sam's put a lot of time and effort into creating a new persona with a non-existent back history and he's laid the foundations of a solid, safe future. He's therefore edgy and resentful of the unexpected intrusion and Dean's expectation that he can walk away at a moment's notice to find their Dad. He's quick to shoot down his brother's statement that he can't do it alone, but even as the words trip off his lips, he suddenly picks up on the desperation in Dean's "I don't want to". And the way Dean drops his head and breaks eye contact as he makes his admission is so weary and uncharacteristically lacking in confidence that it stops Sam in his tracks.

Dean holds his breath, daren't move a muscle for what seems like an age, 'cause this is the moment when he will either have lost Sam forever or maybe, just maybe, he might still have a brother, even if not all of him.

.

In the end, Sam relents and goes with him and they find themselves in Jericho, finishing a job that John started.

Gradually they fall back into the rhythm of being brothers. It's not all plain sailing. Dean knows he's been reluctantly granted a weekend, a last minute, unscheduled appointment that's been slotted into his brother's busy calendar. Sam has changed; he's older now, more independent and he's invested in the hunt for John Winchester on a temporary basis only.

The feeling of insecurity eats at Dean like acid on metal and so he hides behind the emotional equivalent of chaff and ups the smart-mouthed, laid-back image. This amuses and irritates Sam in equal measures, because he's out of practice at dealing with Dean when he's running at full revs.

They tiptoe around the missing months but it causes an underlying friction that eventually burns through Dean's defensive measures when Sam's mouth oversteps the Winchester boundaries with regards to their mother. When Dean takes him by the collar and shoves him up against the railings on Sylvania Bridge, they're both forced to acknowledge that Sam's customary 'little brother get out of jail free' card has expired.

There isn't time for any undue awkwardness, because within minutes the woman in white has them running for their lives. At about the same moment as Dean takes a header off the bridge, Sam remembers just how much Dean means to him after all, how much he hates it when he thinks his big brother might be hurt and that this is one of the main reasons he left the hunting life in the first place.

Whatever else they've forgotten over the years, they haven't forgotten how to work together and suddenly all those years of training, Sam's added maturity and Dean's months of hunting alone sort of click and they're working as a team. They finish the hunt and Constance goes screaming to the ever-after and Dean dares to hope that maybe, just maybe, Sam will forget to go back to his interview at Stanford and will just stay on the road with him to look for Dad.

Sam is understandably incredulous and a little affronted at the suggestion and wonders why Dean can't understand how important the interview is to his future.

Dean may or may not understand, but either way he backs off without a fight and drives Sam 'home'. If Dean is uncharacteristically quiet, Sam can put it down to him being tired and in Sam's opinion, in the wrong. The only trouble is, Sam has remembered how to see past at least some of Dean's smoke and mirrors, so he knows his big brother is hurting and there's nothing he can do, or will do, to ease the pain.

It's an awkward ride and an even more awkward parting. Sam offers the only things he feels he can offer, the olive branch of "Call me if you find him?" and an offer to meet up again.

Dean very nearly blows him off because the rejection is so painful it's making him feel physically sick, but he's Dean Winchester and Sammy and Sammy's happiness have been the main reasons he's kept going since he was four years' old. So he reins it in and gets a good last look at his brother standing outside the dark apartment and offers an awkward olive branch of his own.

He doesn't expect to see Sam again any time soon, maybe never, but some gut instinct makes him turn back around the block. Minutes later Dean is re-visiting the most horrifying moment of his life and pulling his traumatized little brother out of a burning building, although he's not entirely sure Sam wants to be saved. But there's no way, just no way, Sam is dying on Dean's watch.

.

Days later, on the way to Blackwater Ridge, Dean tells Sam that he'd have taken Jess's place if he could. He means it too, because however important it is to him to have Sam there riding shotgun, he's never, ever wanted it on these terms. And Sam, still shocked and wrapped in the horror of pain and smoke and flame, knows that Dean means it.

It's not until much later, when Sam is muttering in a nightmare-ridden sleep, that Dean allows himself to acknowledge the truth, that Sam would have let him swap places with Jess.

That fact hurts. A lot. He understands how Sam feels. He does. But it still really hurts. Dean knows, deep down, that he'll never choose a girl over Sam.

.

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	4. Chapter 4: Sam

**4\. Sam**

 **(Wendigo)**

 **.**

The longer he sits in the Impala, the more pissed Sam gets. The familiar feel of the seat, that brought back so many memories just a few short days ago, now seems to grip at his clothes as the growling metal cocoon of the Impala takes him steadily further away from the remains of the life he'd begun to build.

They'd spent a week poking around in Stanford. At least, Dean tells him it was a week, but Sam can't remember. He does remember being shocked and cold through to his core, even in the warm sunshine. He remembers being angry and grief stricken and desperate to do something, anything, to make everything alright again. Most of all he remembers thinking that it was a nightmare and praying to wake up.

Images parade through Sam's mind in a ceaseless loop. They are so vivid that they overlay the windshield and block out the passing scenery: Jess, still alive, pinned to the ceiling. Flames. The smoldering shell of the apartment. A grave. Silent tears falling from his chin and dropping onto a hot stone wall. Dean's face, taut and intent, talking to him, but the words lost in the buzzing in his ears. The sorrowful faces of his friends. Jess on the ceiling. Dean's hand on his arm. Jess on fire.

They drive, heading for the coordinates that Dad left in his journal. Coordinates that are information and an order all rolled into one. Sam hopes his father is at the location he marks on the map and dreads it being a false lead.

As they travel, the wild grief cannoning around inside Sam sets into a solid, aching mass and the rage grows and spreads through his arteries and veins like wildfire, until he's surprised you can't see them glowing underneath his skin.

Food is unwanted and tastes of ash. Everything reminds him of ash these days. He doesn't think he'll ever get the smell of the fire out of his nostrils. He's scrubbed himself with soap until his skin is raw and Dean spent a morning in a laundromat washing everything they own, not that Dean owns much and Sam now owns even less. But the smell still lingers, following him around like a lost spirit.

And sleep? Sleep is a joke. A joke on him. The moment his eyes close, Jess is above him, burning. He tries never to sleep if he can help it.

He knows Dean is worried about him. Really worried. He even offers to let Sam drive the Impala but Sam just says he's okay and shuts down. Traditionally, he's the one that likes to talk about things, but he can't talk to Dean about this; he can't find a way to relate his own adult experience to that of a four year old child who surely didn't truly comprehend what was going on… did he? Dean doesn't talk about the fire in the nursery, so Sam hopes he doesn't remember too much about it. It's with a sense of bitter irony that he realizes the only person in the world with whom he truly shares the experience is his estranged and mislaid father. For the first time in his life he begins to understand the depth of the rage and grief that has haunted John Winchester for so many years.

The anger is still boiling in Sam's blood when they reach Lost Creek. He keeps it hidden, most of the time, although it bubbles up to the surface when Dean decides to hunt whatever it is that's taking people up at Blackwater Ridge and then decides it's okay for the siblings of the victim to go along too. All Sam wants to do is find Dad. Find Dad, kill the sonofabitch that took Jess and Mom and finish it, once and for all.

.

It turns out they're up against a Wendigo. It's vicious, fast beyond belief and it takes a combination of courage and dumb luck to put it down for good. The guide loses his life up on Blackwater Ridge and for a while it's touch and go if any of them are going to make it back down to Lost Creek.

Dean watches Hayley and her brothers leave in the ambulance with a small measure of regret and a huge amount of satisfaction. Okay, so she's a good looking girl and he's pretty sure that in different circumstances his luck would've been in, but seeing them all there, reunited, safe, it kind of makes his day. It's what hunting is all about and when he casts a quick glance in Sam's direction he can see from the expression on his brother's face that he's finally getting it.

Dean slides down off the hood and flips the keys in Sam's direction, because he figures Sam isn't going to sleep anyway and probably needs some time to process what happened up there in the forest. Besides, Dean is hurting more than he wants to admit. Getting between the Wendigo and Hayley wasn't his smartest idea, but it was the only option at the time. It's no fun being slammed about by a carnivorous ex-human and Dean never wants to be dragged upside down through a forest again.

He settles down on the passenger side and keeps an eye on Sam from under drooping eyelids.

Sam sighs deeply a few times, although it's in a sad sort of way, not the bone deep despairing kind of way of the last few days.

"I get it," he says eventually.

"Huh?" Dean raises an eyebrow and opens his eyes fully. Whatever it is that Sam gets, he doesn't want to miss it.

"What you said up there at the camp, about helping other families. I get it." Sam looks quickly at Dean, long enough for his brother to see the determination on his face. "Don't get me wrong, finding Jessica's killer, Mom's killer, that's still the most important thing." He turns back to face the road. "But I get it. Killing these evil things that are screwing up other peoples' lives, that helps you carry on, to the next day and the day after."

A wry smile pulls at the side of Dean's mouth. "Yeah dude," he says softly. "Sometimes it's the only thing gets you through the next day."

Sam drives in silence after that. He doesn't say it, but he thinks that perhaps Dean has been surviving on that principle for a very long time.

After the headlights have pushed back the darkness for some time, he realizes that Dean is asleep, his head lolling awkwardly against the door.

"I'm sorry man," he says quietly. And he is sorry, because since that night he's been angry at the thing that killed Jess, he's been angry about letting it happen, angry about losing his life in California and he's been angry at Dean too. Because Dean saved him and therefore made it a necessity for Sam to face all that loss and heartbreak when it would've been so much easier to die.

He's not angry at Dean anymore, at least not about that, because when he saw him hanging in the Wendigo's lair, before Dean opened his eyes and groaned, for a horrible and sickening moment Sam thought he might've lost his big brother, before he'd even really found him again.

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	5. Chapter 5: Did you just call me shallow?

**5\. Dude, did you just call me shallow?**

 **(Between Wendigo and Dead in the water)**

 **.**

It's a given thing that Wendy, the waitress at the Lynnwood Inn, is exactly what Dean regards as potential "fun". His comment to this effect seems to imply that Sam is allowed to have fun too and this really rubs Sam's hackles up the wrong way.

Since the Wendigo hunt Sam is on board, more or less, with the plan to gank bad things while they're looking for Dad. The trouble is, on some days it's harder to stick to this plan than others and the more days that pass with no trace of Dad, the harder it gets, especially when you have the love of your life bursting into flame in a reel of horror in the back of your mind.

In Sam's opinion, Dean has a near obsession with attractive girls; this isn't exactly a new thing. When Sam was about ten, Dean moved effortlessly on from 'cute' and popped up on the 'wow' radar and it didn't take him too long to catch on to the fact. Dean wanting to have fun is no surprise to Sam, but right now it's just annoying the hell out of him. Sam can't think past the point where he gets revenge for Jess's death and nothing is further from his mind than "fun". As far as he's concerned, Wendy is nothing more than yet another delay and it already looks as though they have to side-track to investigate some mysterious drownings in Lake Manitoc.

Dean, in turn, is less than impressed by Sam's suggestion that he's not taking the hunt for their father seriously and it aggravates him to the extent that he breaks out of his careful, walking on eggshells behavior towards his younger brother and outright snaps at him. He regrets it soon afterwards of course and sends a number of guilty glances in Sam's direction as he hurls the Impala in the direction of Lake Manitoc.

There's not much talk on the drive to the lake. It's not quite a strained silence, but it's not far off. Sam holds his tongue until they're halfway there and then his ill humor gets the better of him.

"How are we supposed to find Dad's trail, if we keep going after any old thing that might be a hunt?"

Dean sends him a glance through narrowed eyes. "Didn't we already have this conversation?"

Sam takes a breath, gathers steam. "We're not getting any closer. Dad could be dead for all we know."

The music is off, so Sam hears the small creak of leather as Dean shifts angrily in his seat. "Dad is NOT dead. Don't say that."

"How do you even know that? You don't. The more time we waste, the colder the trail is getting."

Dean hits his palm against the steering wheel and the angry slap resonates in the enclosed space of the Impala. "Dad is not dead." He repeats stubbornly as he rubs absently and apologetically at the wheel. "What would you have us do, huh? We don't know where Dad is. You want me to drive round in a circle not knowing where he is? Or do you think it might be a good idea to, I dunno… mebbe hunt something evil while we're looking? Y'know, save someone?" There's a wealth of annoyance and sarcasm in the words and Sam responds in kind.

"Saving someone? That's what you're calling it now? I didn't realize you were planning to _save_ Wendy."

Dean almost grins but alters it into a smirk when he realizes that Sam is serious.

"You're kidding me, right? You've got your panties in a twist 'cause of Wendy, who I didn't get the chance to _save_ on account of you being in such an all fired hurry."

Sam gives him a pissy look from under his bangs. "Sometimes Dean," he declares airily in a manner that would be more appropriate on a collegiate lawn, "Sometimes I think you're lacking in depth."

Dean blinks and gives him an incredulous glare. "Dude, did you just call me shallow?"

Sam huffs and turns his head to look out of the window. "It would be nice if you thought with your upstairs brain occasionally. Let's just get this over with, okay."

Dean stares at him with amazement, directs a quick glance at his own lap and returns his eyes to the road. After a moment, unseen by Sam, he looks quickly back at his brother, almost as though he's about to say something. But there's something about the set of the large shoulders that is off-putting and Dean knows Sam is only being sharp because he's hurting, so he bites his lip and keeps his silence.

It's not the right moment, probably never will be the right moment, to try and explain that girls like him for him. They're not judging how he hunts or if he's a good son or a good brother, they're not frowning over his coursework like his teachers did, and hopefully they're not about to claw out his heart or throat or bite him… well, not in a fatal way anyway. In short, they're fun.

Dean will never be able to explain that girls are not just R&R. He knows he can give them a good time, a really good time, but would not want to admit, even to himself, that in return they make him smile for real, give him some desperately needed comfort and affection as well as a good roll in the hay, or bed, or back seat, whatever. For a brief time he can forget all the bad things that happen, because girls like Wendy are a safety net to catch, albeit temporarily, the explosive mix of adrenaline and self-doubt that is Dean Winchester.

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 _Next up… Lake Manitoc. Sometimes Dean isn't what he seems._

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	6. Chapter 6: Smart asses

**6\. Smart asses aren't always what they seem.**

 **(Dead in the water)**

 **.**

They leave Andrea and Lucas Barr behind them in the park, two people trying to come to terms in their own ways with the loss of a husband, a father. Andrea, all summer clothes and bright smiles, the sorrow in her big brown eyes kept in check as she worries about her young son. And Lucas, so scared, so grief-stricken he hasn't been able to speak since the lake took his father away right before his eyes.

Sam realizes it was pure chance that he overheard any of Dean's one-way conversation with Lucas. A brief pause in the screams of playing children, a lifetime of being attuned to one particular voice and he picked up the words as they filtered across the playground. They made Sam's gut tighten then and do so again now as his mind replays them. " _I think I know how you feel. When I was your age, I saw something."_ Maybe Dean remembers a whole lot more than he ever told Sam?

Sam recalls the way his brother's face went all tight and sad when he said those words and it makes him want to sling his arm across Dean's shoulders and give him a hug. Of course it wouldn't be well received, especially in the middle of the street, and he may well end up with a slap or even a punch for his pains, so he curbs the instinct and peers over at the picture in Dean's hand instead.

It's the Carlton House, the home of another victim of the lake. A picture given by Lucas as a gift, in exchange for the picture Dean drew of the Winchester family. A family with four figures. Even now, after all this time, four figures. Sam wonders what a psychiatrist would make of that.

.

 _Fire, heat, smoke, horror…_ Dean walks on auto-pilot. Deep in thought, immersed in the echoing silence of his own mind, he desperately rams memories back into the box where he usually keeps a November night locked down tight. He has a lot of boxes, gets a few more every year. Most of his bad shit is piled up in one big carton, but there are a few locked boxes, things like 'Dad going missing in Louisiana', 'Shtriga', 'Flagstaff' and 'Sam leaving for college'. The November box doesn't even have a label; it just sits in a solitary corner, bound in locks and chains but forever exuding poison.

Something about this case is getting to him. Lucas is getting to him. Dean is off-balance suddenly, his smart ass cover slipping. He takes a deep breath and tries to calm down. Gradually he becomes aware of the sound of his own boots on the sidewalk and the color of the grass, the green leaves against the sky.

Sam is saying something. Dean thinks he might have said it before. Sam's hand catches at his forearm and Dean jumps a little.

"Dean?!"

Dean jerks his arm away and frowns at his little brother, who looks both worried and frustrated. He wants to say something snarky about being handsy, but right now he can't be bothered to talk.

"Are you even listening to me?" Sam holds out his hand again. "Let's see the drawing."

Dean hands it over without a word and gets into the Impala.

.

It's an ugly case in the way only bullying gone wrong can be and the nasty little tale gradually unfolds. Two more members of the Carlton family die and the vengeful spirit of poor, murdered little Peter Sweeney would've killed both Andrea and Lucas if it wasn't for the Winchesters. Finally the vengeful spirit settles for Andrea's father and the whole unpleasant series of events comes to a close. Of course, they'll never be over for Peter Sweeney's mother, because nothing is ever going to bring her little boy back.

At least, by the time the Winchesters leave town, they know Lucas and Andrea are safe and Lucas has recovered enough to be talking again. They even get a plateful of sandwiches by way of thanks.

It's the sandwiches that start it all. They stop a few hours out from Lake Manitoc and Sam gets some take-out coffee while Dean fills up the Impala's gas tank. There's a decent little rest area off to one side of the gas station, so they park the Impala in the dappled sunshine under some trees and sit on the hood.

For a while they just chew and sip coffee and let themselves wind down. Sam suggests finding a motel before too long and Dean agrees, with the expected qualifier of pushing on for another hour or two.

It's then, when the plate is empty, that Sam says, "Dean?"

Now Sam says "Dean" a lot and Dean couldn't even begin to guess the number of times the word has crossed his lips since he first learned to speak. "De" was, after all, Sam's first word. John never stood a chance, although "Dadadada" did follow shortly after.

The tone of this particular "Dean", combined with the relatively peaceful location and their full bellies makes the elder Winchester instantly suspicious. Sam reserves that particular tone for when he wants to talk about feelings, never one of Dean's favorite subjects.

He tries to ignore it, hopes if he stares at the activity over by the gas pumps that Sam will just give up. The trouble is, there is no activity by the gas pumps and sure enough, after a couple of minutes, it comes again.

"Dean?"

Dean isn't outright hostile. He turns to face Sam and lets his right eyebrow raise in a questioning arc, at the same time as the left one curls down in a warning manner.

"Yeah?"

"You think Lucas will be okay now?"

Dean is a little surprised, but gives the question serious thought. "Yeah," he says eventually. "He's got Andrea and they'll look out for each other. He's a tough kid."

Sam speaks carefully and his eyes don't lose their focus on Dean's face. "I guess it hit him pretty hard, though, to just stop speaking like that."

Dean shrugs, uncomfortable with the way the conversation is going. "Everybody deals with things in their own way, Sammy."

Sam doesn't pull him up over the "Sammy" and now Dean knows he's in trouble.

"You never told me you stopped talking."

Dean slides down off the hood, dusts the ass of his pants. "Nothin' to tell."

"How long?" The question is pitched just right and combined with Sam's current empathetic expression it would encourage any civilian to open up and spill their hidden secrets without pause. But Dean is not just any civilian.

"A while. Leave it alone Sam. We're still not hugging."

But Sam has his teeth into it now.

"I guess I didn't know, how much you remembered."

Dean looks at him like he's an idiot. "Not the sort of thing you forget in a hurry."

Of course, Sam knows this only too well and Jess's face swims before his eyes. It gives him enough of a jolt that he doesn't realize Dean has gone until the Impala door shrieks and the music turns on. The moment is lost and Sam sighs and drops into the passenger seat. Defeated… for now.

Dean's face has a closed expression as they pull back onto the blacktop and Sam knows better than to try and shout delicate questions over the sound of Metallica.

Instead, he ponders for some time and decides he gets it now, why Dean was so intent on saving Lucas. The boy who watched his father killed by water was not all that far removed from the boy who watched his mother killed by fire. Perhaps in some way Dean was saving himself too when he dived in that lake, because to let Lucas die was to let the monsters win.

His brother's profile is rigid and he won't turn to look at Sam for some time, because they both know that however much steel Dean puts into his expression, he can never quite hide the emotion in his eyes.

It's tough to imagine the strong, deadly hunter sitting beside him ever being too scared to even speak. Suddenly Sam wonders how much of the wise-cracking, laid-back charm is just a smoke screen? Is it Dean being brave, like Mom wanted him to be?

Is that why Dean told Lucas to take care of his Mom, because John told Dean to take care of Sam and somehow that gave Dean enough courage to carry on?

Sam thinks maybe his big brother isn't so shallow after all. In fact, Dean has layers and secrets hidden down deep that Sam never even knew existed. But he guesses they're still not going to hug.

.

 _ **Drop me a line, love to hear what you think of these.**_


	7. Chapter 7: Nervous flyer

**7\. Nervous Flyer**

 **(Phantom Traveler)**

 **.**

 _ **(ngregory763 – this one is for you!)**_

 **.**

"Sir! Sir! Wait up!"

Sam is already through the door when the strident calls of the small woman dressed in airline uniform attract his attention. He pauses with one hand still holding the door open and turns to her with an enquiring look on his face.

"Please Sir, just a moment." She comes to a halt next to him, her face flushed from exertion and the stress of dealing with the stunned passengers of flight 424.

"The airline is truly sorry for your experience and any inconvenience. We want to do everything possible to make the rest of your journey as comfortable as possible."

Already outside on the walkway, Dean snorts something about driving the 'planes up the interstate, although it's not quite that polite.

Sam ignores him and turns slightly so Dean is behind his shoulder. He smiles at the nervous woman. "He's just a little upset."

"Sir, I quite understand." She fixes earnest blue eyes on his face. "You're not at your expected destination and the airline would like to help in any way it can. Accommodation, an alternative flight, meal vouchers, alternative transport."

Sam is trapped, trying to remember where the flight was actually headed; it hadn't exactly been a consideration when he bought last minute tickets.

"If you'd like to accompany me to the desk, Sir. It will only take a few minutes."

Sam can't think of any reasonable explanation why a genuine passenger wouldn't want to take advantage of the offer and the last thing he wants is for any suspicion about the events to be directed at two late boarders, especially when their faces are visible on so many airport security videos. So he smiles and steps back into the concourse, raising an eyebrow at Dean as he goes. Dean still looks a bit pasty and waves him off.

"I'll wait out here dude."

.

Dean is still outside when Sam emerges some twenty minutes later.

"All sorted," Sam announces calmly. "They offered us free flights back to Pennsylvania or on to our destination." He grins and waves a handful of printed vouchers at Dean, who scowls at him and takes a step further away from the entrance doors.

"There is no way, no way, I am gettin' back in one of those friggin' death traps."

Sam smirks. "Meal vouchers." He holds up the first voucher with a triumphant gesture. "Motel vouchers. And this one, this is a free courtesy car, to be dropped off at an airport of our choice."

Dean stares at him.

"Hey," says Sam, his eyes twinkling a little. "It's a few hours' drive. You sure you don't want me to swap this for a flight ticket?"

Dean swipes the courtesy car voucher out of his hand without a word and marches towards the hire vehicles.

.

They take it in turns to drive the small and plastic-scented vehicle back towards Pennsylvania. The engine is small and it's soon obvious that the drive will take a couple of hours more than anticipated. Dean takes the first stint and then folds himself awkwardly into the small passenger seat, muttering something about the car only being suitable to transport under-5s. Despite that, he's soon asleep.

Sam drives on, trying to convince himself that the demon was lying and that Jess wasn't still burning in hell. He thinks that, of all the people he's ever met, Jess was the most innocent, her only sin being to fall in love with a cursed Winchester. He wipes his eyes and firms his jaw and tells himself that Dean is right; demons lie.

This all leads him into daydreaming and he's so lost in memories of Jess that when Dean shouts out and startles awake, Sam swerves in shock and nearly hits a passing pick-up truck. Dean is wide-eyed and pale and doesn't comment on Sam's near accident, so Sam knows his brother is severely rattled.

"Nightmare?"

Dean scrubs his hand over his face and shoves his fingers angrily through his hair.

"Friggin' planes."

His knee bounces and the dull silver of his ring catches the light as he plucks at the ragged hole in his jeans. He's wound tight as a spring and Sam decides it's time for a break. He turns off at the next exit and pulls up outside a roadside bar.

"Fancy a beer?" Sam keeps it casual and steps out of the little car, stretching and cracking the stiffness out of his joints as they head into the bar.

Sam sips his beer and enjoys being upright and unfolded. He watches Dean down a shot of whiskey, and another, and another.

"I don't get it," he says eventually. "How come you hate flying so much when you've never flown before today?"

Dean shrugs, won't meet his eye.

Sam fishes a little. "I guess everything that happens is out of your control? You're trapped?"

Dean downs another shot, fast. He pushes himself back from the bar and turns to leave. Sam thinks his brother isn't going to answer and it will just be another unsolved mystery in the enigma that is Dean Winchester, but then Dean pauses and looks back over his shoulder. He meets Sam's eyes briefly and then looks away.

"It's not that, Sammy. I guess I just don't want to burn to death, okay?"

And with that he's gone, slamming out through the door and into the fresh air.

Sam puts his beer down, drops some notes on the bar and follows his brother back to the car. He makes a promise to himself that Dean will never have to get on another airplane.

.

 _Drop me a line, love to hear from you, those pms and reviews keep the muse fed._

 _Thanks for reading and special thanks to reviewers:_

 _ngregory763, cmr2014, DearHart, iwokeuponthewrongsideoflife, Kathy, monMona and Guest._


	8. Chapter 8:Secrets

**8\. Secrets**

 **(Bloody Mary)**

 **.**

Toledo, Ohio

Dean can't remember the last time his brother slept through the night, or through a journey, without the poison of a nightmare polluting his sleep. Time and again Dean has to call his name or lay a hand on his arm, whatever it takes to break his brother free from the cage of his own unconscious mind.

They carry on hunting anyway. In Toledo they realize that an urban legend has turned real, or maybe the urban legends all started from this particular Mary.

Betrayed, murder victim Mary is after revenge and she's getting it from anyone with a deadly secret, anyone who's guilty of killing another person. Some of them probably deserve it. Some of them, like frightened Charlie, made guilty by association with her boyfriend's suicide, were victims in their own right. But Mary is too far gone down the rocky road of vengeance and death to care and by now she's mobile, no longer trapped in her own cursed mirror but able to move freely to any reflective surface.

The Winchesters pin down the location of the mirror that witnessed Mary's bloody death and Sam rightly deduces that it will be necessary to summon her and then smash the mirror to put an end to all the horror.

Dean is not best pleased when his brother insists on doing the summoning. He's even less pleased when it appears that Sam feels his guilt over Jessica's death will be sufficient reason for Mary to strike.

"She'll come after me," says his little brother with conviction.

Dean swallows hard, tells Sam there is nothing he could've done and points out that as he knows all about Jessica's death, it can hardly be a secret.

And then Sam drops the bombshell. No emotion really, just straight out with it.

"I haven't told you everything."

Dean is surprised and hurt, but nowhere near as much as he's worried, because there's no reason he can think of why Sam would have a secret about Jessica's death.

Sam won't be drawn further and as soon as it's dark they go ahead with the plan, with Dean's heart hammering a little harder than it would be if he knew what was going on inside his brother's head.

His pulse rate picks up still further when he's forced to abandon the hunt to try and misdirect some cops, leaving Sam alone with the mirror and his undisclosed guilty secret. He makes it back in time to see the blood streaming from his brother's eyes and smashes the mirror so hard that it shatters into a thousand tiny shards. Mary isn't as finished as she should be, but a sharp move on Dean's part finishes her off.

After that it's a smooth run and soon they're heading out of town with another nasty chalked up to the ganked list. Everything would be all fine and dandy by Winchester standards, if it wasn't for Sam's nightmares, their missing father, the entire supernatural layer of the universe and the small matter of an undisclosed secret, because if the bleeding eyes were anything to go by, Sam does have a secret after all.

Dean tries to get it out of him, but it's no use. His brother is keeping it to himself. Whatever IT is.

Dean casts a worried glance across the width of the Impala, but Sam's expression is set and he isn't sharing any time soon. It makes Dean's mouth go dry and a tension headache starts to pound at the back of his skull.

Dean hates secrets.

Sam had a secret when he was little and then he ran away. Dean will never forget Flagstaff.

Sam had an even bigger secret once. Dean suspected anyway, but it didn't make any difference. Sam still left for Stanford.

Sam kept secrets from Jessica. Jessica is dead now.

John went on what was supposed to be a routine hunt, but it turned out he had a secret he wasn't sharing with Dean. John still hasn't come back.

Secrets are bad things. People get hurt. Sometimes they die.

Now Sam has a secret again and all Dean can do is hope he finds out what it is.

Before it's too late.

.

 _ **I was torn, not wanting to put in much about the Bloody Mary story but needing it to explain the discovery of Sam's secret. Hope it worked okay.**_

 _ **Thanks for those reviews. Love it when you drop me a line : ) Thanks for reading.**_


	9. Chapter 9: True or False

**9\. True or False**

 **(Skin)**

 **.**

St. Louis disappears behind them. For a while they just drive; floating along in that tired but oddly content phase of coming down from the adrenaline high of a successfully concluded hunt. It's almost as though they can finally relax once they're back in the Impala and moving on.

Sam is wondering what would've happened to Zack and Becky if they hadn't inadvertently befriended the one person in Stanford who was able to help them when the shapeshifter tore their world apart. Somehow this leads his thoughts on to him admitting to Dean that he hadn't really fitted in at Stanford, and that of course leads to Dean calling them both freaks.

The word 'freak' jumps out at him. "I know I'm a freak." Dean's words in the Impala mirroring the shapeshifter's "I know I'm a freak." And suddenly Sam wonders just how much truth was spilling out of the monster's mouth.

He waits a while longer and then gets his courage up and just puts the question out there. He's not sure if he really wants to know the truth, so in the end it's a bit abrupt.

"Did you ever want that, to be Joe College?"

Dean squints at him, puzzled. "Where'd that come from?"

"I dunno. I was just wondering… did you ever want to do something different from all this? Like, you know, college or something?"

Dean bats it back easily, although Sam senses that his brother's stance has tightened.

"Not really the college type, Sam."

"You could have been…" Sam persists. "If you'd wanted to be."

"Yeah, well I didn't." Dean eyes him with suspicion. "Seriously man, what sort of question is that?"

"I guess I never stopped to think, maybe you wanted something different too."

Dean's finger taps an uneven beat on the wheel. "I'm doin' what I'm good at." He waits for a minute or so and then says, in a casual tone. "Guess it was weird talkin' to something that looked like me, hell, sounded like me."

"Thought like you too, Dean."

Dean doesn't quite flinch, but Sam knows him well enough that he reads the instinct anyway.

"Somethin' you want to share there, Sam?"

Dean pulls up at an intersection. They're in the middle of nowhere and there's not a vehicle in sight, but he waits anyway.

"Dean?"

Dean looks over at him and manages to look both worried and sad with only a miniscule movement of his eyebrow. The sun is starting to go down and the light falls full on his face, catching the iris of his eyes and turning them pale green. It's not unusual; Dean's eyes change color with the light all the time, but on this occasion it's disturbingly close to the silver flare of the shapeshifter's eyes.

"It was a monster, Sammy. They lie."

Sam wants to ask his brother if he's bitter about the assumption on both John and Sam's behalf that Dean was happy to stay in the hunting life. Even more, he wants to ask if Dean is as angry and hurt about John leaving as the shapeshifter implied. But what he really wants to know is if Dean, underneath his bravado, really believes everyone leaves him because he's completely worthless.

Sam thinks the problem is, that if Dean confirms the shapeshifter's words, then their shaky new partnership will be de-railed. Most likely, Dean won't answer anyway and the questions will merely cause his brother to put up more defensive walls.

He knows it's weak, but Sam really doesn't want it confirming that in some unwitting way he might be at least partly responsible for the look of hurt and self-loathing in the eyes of the pseudo Dean. Right now, still raw from Jess, he just couldn't deal with that.

So Sam shrugs casually. He learned some of Dean's tricks years ago. "Yeah, I know," he says easily. "Monsters always lie, right. Good thing you shot him before he starting downloading and broadcasting all your porn."

Dean smiles a small and sad smile and another miniscule movement of his eyebrow signals his relief. He presses the gas pedal and the Impala surges forward, taking with her a trunk full of half-truths and two wounded souls.

.

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 _Love to know what you think of this one? : )_


	10. Chapter 10: Broken

**10\. Broken**

 **(Asylum)**

."Dean."

It's just one word, but there's something in the tone that makes Dean turn around.

Sam is a dimly lit figure against the grimy backdrop but Dean can see clearly enough that his blood turns to ice.

Time stands still, or maybe his mind moves so fast it's just an illusion. Memories download at warp speed, stealing his breath.

 _In Ankeny, Iowa, an invisible Hook Man draws a jagged gash in the wall. Dean shrugs off the cold chill of premonition. Something bad is coming and he doesn't know what it is._

His pulse thumps...

 _They're attacked by things creepy and crawly in Oasis Plains in Oklahoma, but their most dangerous enemy is the open acknowledgement of the bitter wounds they both carry about Sam's departure for Stanford._

 _The hunt ends with them being the hunted, but they survive to fight another day and there's a glimmer of hope for the future...or at least Dean thought there was, until now._

His pulse thumps again; it's going at the speed of light, but the memories are faster _._

 _Sam's secret. Sam's visions of Jess. Sam's visions of the Lawrence house. Dean doesn't feel any relief now he knows the secret. Instead he feels again the wash of helpless, hurt confusion that made him leave his plea on his Dad's answerphone. Going back to Lawrence nearly broke Dean and both he and Sam know it._

 _The coordinates for Rockford, Illinois, flash before his eyes. Sam's not happy about it, but Dean insists they follow orders and now they're here._

And now his little brother is looking at him with hate in his hazel/blue eyes and Dean is looking down the barrel of a shotgun.

Dean gets some air into his lungs and hears his voice, all calm, telling Sam to put it down, but even as he speaks he realizes he saw the birth of that expression earlier, after Dr Ellicot's son dug around in Sam's thoughts. It seems good old Ellicot Snr has been adding his supernatural influence too and amped Sam's anger up to homicidal, or quite possibly fratricidal, levels.

"What are you gonna do, Sam? Gun's filled with rock salt. It's not gonna kill me."

They both know Sam is close enough to cause some serious damage. That doesn't stop him though and the blast punches into Dean's chest so violently that it throws him off his feet. He's already half unconscious from the sheer physical shock before the sound roars past him. He smashes back through the hidden door, out cold before he hits the floor.

He comes to seconds later to find Sam standing over him. He's too hurt to move and once he gets some oxygen back into his lungs his voice is his only defence.

He tries, he really does, but by the time he hands Sam his gun he's wishing it really was loaded because he's not sure he wants to get up again if his brother hates him that much.

Sam pulls the trigger. Then he pulls it again and again and it's the disappointment on his face that gets Dean up onto his feet.

The weird adrenaline/anguish rush sees him put Sam on the floor, carries him through the ending of Ellicot Snr and gets them back to the Impala.

"I'm not really in the sharing and caring kinda mood."

Sam is heavy and desperate with guilt but Dean really can't do any sharing right now. The numbness and the adrenaline have both worn off and he can barely talk at all.

He drops Sam off at the motel, mutters something about a beer and "back later" and leaves him standing there.

He drives to a motel a few miles further on, does up his jacket, pays cash up front and gets the room door shut before he falls apart.

It starts in his hands. One minute he's undoing his jacket and then his fingers start to shake. Suddenly he's on his knees on the filthy carpet and his vision is greying out. Shock, he tells himself and then he realizes he's on his face and the excruciating pain in his chest has brought him around enough to open his eyes.

It takes a while but he gets under the luke warm shower and aims the spray at his chest. They don't use nice, clean, table quality rock salt in their shells, so he has a chest full of coarse, gritty chunks. He digs some out and wakes up some time later with ice cold water running over his crumpled body.

He gets out of the tub, trembling with cold, dresses the wounds and just sits on the bed until the shaking eases off.

He wants to punch something or someone, but it would put him on the floor. He wants to cry, but he can't, because it's just too bad to get his head around.

Eventually he puts on a clean shirt, drives back to Sam and gets into bed without a word. He can hear Sam breathing at the far side of the room and knows he's awake. His little brother is right there, but further away than he's ever been.

Something wet slips down the side of his face and runs into his ear. He's not crying, it's just his heart hurts worse than his chest or his back or his head where it slammed into the floor. It hurts because his brother hates him. Most of all it hurts because he just lost his one and only friend.

 _Love to hear from you. Reviews are like gasoline, they keep us writers going. :)_

 _Thanks for reading._


	11. Chapter 11: What doesn't break you

**10\. What doesn't break you makes you stronger.**

 **(Scarecrow)**

 **.**

"Dean!"

Dean breaks the habit of a lifetime and doesn't even twitch. He's flat on his back, face impassive and about as deeply asleep as Sam has ever seen him.

It's been three days since Rockford and the… thing that happened in the asylum. That little incident when Sam tried to kill his brother. When Sam would have killed his brother if Dean's gun had been loaded. That little incident has been eating Sam up from the inside out ever since. He really needs to talk about it, but that particular conversation is so far off the menu it's still back on the farm.

They haven't moved far. One motel swap and they've drifted to a halt. Dean seems tired, tired and quiet, hiding behind a carefully constructed wall that is so blank Sam can't even make out the brickwork, let alone what's behind it.

So they've eaten, or rather they've bought food and pushed it around a little and most of it is sitting on the table or residing in the trash can. Sam has done a lot of research about ghost possessions and deep-seated psychological triggers and still hasn't found a good enough excuse for shooting his brother, even it was only with rock salt.

Dean has had a few beers and stared at the lopsided TV and mainly he's been flat out on his back, asleep. It's unnerving; Dean doesn't sleep much and when he does he usually lies on his front. Sam bites his lip in a guilty manner and figures maybe his brother's chest is still sore. He daren't ask, but that rock salt must've packed quite a punch.

It seems Dean is still kind of tired because he doesn't move when Sam calls him again, so in the end Sam picks up his brother's cell and finds himself talking to their father.

.

John's orders send them in the direction of Burkitsville, Indiana. It's the orders that cause all the trouble and they act like a spark, igniting an explosion that fractures the brothers' delicate relationship.

Sam steps away from the Impala and does something he's wanted to do ever since Dean pulled him out of that burning apartment. He stands alone, an independent adult who can make his own decisions and act on them.

In turn, Dean calls Sam something he's been wanting to call him since long before Stanford. Selfish. And then he drives away, because there's only so many times a man can stomach being left behind and Dean has reached his limit.

So Sam heads on foot for the bus to California, the red glow of the Impala's tail lights receding fast behind him as Dean powers her towards Burkitsville.

.

It is twenty-four hours before they speak again and twenty-four hours is a lot of thinking time, even when you're working a case or spending time with a fellow hitchhiker.

Sam gradually comes to realize that doing things your own way and working to your own agenda doesn't always feel like it's the right thing to do, especially when it means your big brother is hunting by himself. The initial feelings of euphoria and freedom drift away and turn into a nagging certainty that he should be in Burkitsville and that California can wait.

Dean has, in his turn, had plenty of time to reflect on Rockford and the last few months. With a few lonely hours to himself, he's come to the conclusion that Sam didn't really want to kill him; that was all Dr Ellison's psychotic influence. But it seems that Sam does have some real issues with his brother and Dean knows he's guilty of reassuming the older sibling role, even though adult Sam has managed perfectly well by himself for years.

Internal musings aside, it turns out that Dean is facing a Norse god and a small town full of people who are only too happy to sacrifice passing strangers to keep the town prosperous. The good thing about being up against such a hefty adversary is that he really needs Sam's input, even if it's only on the end of a 'phone, and to the relief of them both it's a good enough excuse for the brothers to start communicating again.

Now it's a funny thing, but words spoken into the ether are so much easier than those that require eye contact and body language. Dean even goes so far as to say he's proud of Sam standing up to their father and doing his own thing, something he would probably never say face to face. As they end the call, suddenly everything is okay again between them, or as okay as they can be with Dean hunting alone and Sam heading for California.

Sam is still with fellow hitchhiker, Meg. He finds her strangely compelling, right up until the point when he's worried himself sick for hours about Dean not answering his cell. Suddenly she's just a part of the bus station and he's heading for a stolen car and his brother, because family is, after all, more important than a personal mission of revenge or a transient free spirit you've only known for a short while.

.

Sam turns up in time to save the day, or at least in time to save his brother and fellow sacrifice Emily. They torch the sacred apple tree and end the Norse god's rule and see Emily safely on her way to another life.

"What made you change your mind?" Dean is trying to be casual, but Sam knows how important the answer is to his brother.

"I didn't. I still wanna find Dad. And you're still a pain in the ass. But, Jess and Mom… they're both gone. Dad is God knows where. You and me. We're all that's left. So, if we're gonna see this through, we're gonna do it together."

It's the truth and it's sincere and it's what Dean needs to hear. Of course, he acts like a smart-ass about it, because it's much too close to being a chick-flick moment. But Sam doesn't mind, because he's made his own decision to come back this time and perhaps that's all he ever needed to do to make things right in his own head.

They drive for a while in comfortable silence until Sam points out that it's been a couple of days since they actually stopped and slept.

"Yeah," says Dean. "Next motel." It's the tiny slur in his voice that turns a spotlight on all the loose ends that have been floating around in Sam's mind.

He nods in the direction of the multi-coloured bruise on Dean's forehead. "What happened?"

Dean runs his fingers lightly over the bump. "Nothin' much," he says easily. "Sheriff butt-stroked me."

Three hours, thinks Sam. Three hours I tried to call him before I stole a car. "How'd he get the drop on you?" he asks casually.

Dean looks a bit shifty, which means he's embarrassed, and mutters something about the community college.

Sam is adding things up in his head and his brows knit in a scowl at the result. First, there's the travelling time from the college to the root cellar, then there's a time lapse when Dean was in the root cellar with Emily… and didn't seem to have made much attempt to escape. Then there's the hours in the orchard, when his brother failed dismally to get loose from his bindings despite the fact he had an innocent to save. Sam realizes with a sick slide in his stomach that Dean wouldn't have made it through the hunt alive if Sam hadn't turned up in the nick of time.

Sam looks at his brother's forehead again and speaks carefully, as though he's not hanging on the answer at all. "That concussion causing you much trouble?"

"Had worse." Dean keeps his eyes focused on the road and goes a bit pink around the ears, so Sam knows he's guessed right and needs to dole out pills as soon as they get settled in the motel. He'll be waking up a few times too, to make sure Dean hasn't decided to pull the ultimate evasive maneuver and slip into a coma.

A few minutes later, Dean spots a motel and they pull up with an almost tangible sense of relief. Sam opens his door, puts a leg out onto the parking lot and then pauses.

"I don't want to kill you, Dean."

Dean tilts his head back and looks directly at him and Sam is reminded why his brother won't make eye contact when he's got something to hide.

"I know you don't, Sammy."

Sam thinks he's never seen anyone look quite so sad.

.

 _ **I always felt that the end of 'Scarecrow' finally put the brothers in a position where they could start to work together properly, although of course there are so many trials ahead for them.**_

 _ **Do you want more or shall we leave it there?**_

 _ **Thanks for taking the time to read, and thanks so much to reviewers:**_

 _ **Ngregory763, cmr2014, monMona, iwokeuponthewrongsideoflife, Kathy, DearHart, waitingforAslan, Blossom9, hollyhobbit101 and guest.**_


	12. Chapter 12: Straight to the heart

**12\. Straight to the heart**

 **(Faith)**

 **.**

The sharp notes of the advertisement jingle coming from the TV sound off-key alongside the monotonous beep of the monitors.

Sam's face is saying everything his mouth isn't and Dean's bravado falters, as flimsy as wet tissue paper as his mouth keeps on being bad-ass while his internal voice pleads silently with his brother.

" _Don't look at me like that man. I can do this dying business. I got it. But don't cry…please don't cry."_

Sam takes his leave soon afterwards and there's the strong flex of steel in his voice and his expression. Dean hopes he can keep it there when…when IT happens.

" _Good boy, Sammy. Go and do some geek stuff so you think you've tried to beat it; it's not gonna make any difference anyhow. I've gotta hold it together here, keep my fightin' face on."_ Dean blinks hard and swallows harder. _"Let me keep some self-respect dude. I can't, not when you're standing there with that look on your face."_

 _._

The shadows of evening creep across the window and Dean stirs restlessly against the crisp hospital sheets, realizes he's been sleeping. There isn't enough time left for sleeping.

" _Damn it, Sam. You were never meant to see this. I should've died taking down a monster, just disappeared in the dark somewhere. You don't need this stuck in your head for the rest of your life."_

Dean struggles slowly upright, cursing his own weakness but too breathless to voice the words. He paws at the hospital gown, pulls away the drips and monitors. There's no way Dean Winchester is going down wearing a dress. By the time he's got his boots on, he's exhausted, but at least he feels like a man again.

" _I don't want you to remember me in here…I was meant to go down fighting, not fading away in a friggin' hospital bed."_

The doctor tries to stop him, but without much enthusiasm. It seems he respects a dying man's wish and the measure of relief in his eyes tells Dean they're short of beds anyway.

" _Nobody knows me here, Sam. They keep looking at me with pity in their eyes, like I'm some tragic little kid. I can't die in here man. I don't want to die in here."_

He accepts the wheelchair ride to the entrance, because it'll get him back to Sam all the quicker, and then he gets his first stroke of luck of the day when he flags down a taxi at the first attempt. He settles uneasily on the shiny plastic seat, wishing for the rumble and familiarity of the Impala.

" _Sam, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have screwed up your life again. That's one of the reasons you couldn't wait to get out the door and off to college in the first place, 'cause you were afraid one day you'd be watching me die."_

The taxi driver takes his fare with a sympathetic smile and holds the door open while Dean pulls himself out onto the parking lot. Dean nods his thanks and hangs onto the breezeway rail for a minute or two to get his breath as the taxi driver gives him a last concerned look and leaves with a swish of tires. Dean wonders if he has enough time left to drive the Impala one last time. The way he feels right now, he figures not, but it's his own fault.

" _This one is on me. All that trainin' and I still screwed up, wasn't thinkin' straight. And now it's gone and killed me, just like Dad said it would. Man, you're gonna be pissed."_ Alone, illuminated only by the flickering light of the neon sign, Dean Winchester feels the sorrowful weight of his father's dark gaze. " _'M sorry Dad. I let you down."_

Sam is astonished and pleased and anxious when Dean knocks the door, and wastes no time steering him to a chair. Dean cracks a joke and soaks up the sight of his brother's shaky grin like a desert soaks up rain.

" _I don't wanna die by myself, surrounded by strangers. If I gotta go out, I want you there man, up 'til it's nearly the end. I know it's selfish…but dude I'm scared. I'm not ready for this. I'm really scared."_

Sam assures him he's called everyone in their Dad's journal and Dean is not dying on his watch. His optimistic desperation taints the room like a bitter sweet odor and Dean desperately wants to believe him.

 _"Dammit Dad! Where are you? Don't you dare leave Sammy here to deal with this by himself."_

Sam admits he still hasn't been able to reach Dad. Dean isn't too surprised. When John Winchester goes radio silent, he goes radio silent.

" _Where are you, Dad? C'mon man. Don't go and miss the main event here. I'd kinda like you around, y'know?"_

.

They make a quick run up to Nebraska. The church of Roy LeGrange is a huge, white circus tent, set in what appears to be an endless sea of mud. Dean thinks the Impala's chassis will need a good clean afterwards and hopes Sam remembers to do it before it rots. He waves off his brother's offer of help impatiently and hauls himself painfully out of the car.

" _I'm not dead yet little brother. Get your great big paws offa me."_

The Impala is cold and slick with rain beneath his fingertips as Dean braces himself against her door.

" _Don't let me fall baby, please, not in front of Sammy."_

He struggles manfully through the mud, Sam dancing around him like an anxious sheepdog. Dean's impatience at his own weakness, at the wasting of precious time, leaks out in breathless sentences as his mind keeps up its one-note song.

" _You're trying everythin' you can; you ain't gonna let me die in peace. I get that man, I do. I'd do the same if it was the other way around…but Sam, you're gonna have to let me go. And the way I feel right now, it's not gonna be too long."_

The big eyes and the sweet voice that interrupt him belong to Layla and Dean stops short, wishing he didn't feel like he was about to keel over and face plant the mud. He drags a grin onto his face, because never let it be said that Dean Winchester didn't die trying.

" _Hey there beautiful! Now that's the best thing I've seen in days. Oh please tell me you ain't here for yourself; you're with some old grandad or somethin'?"_

He doesn't find out because they have to move inside to get a place and Sam is really keen to be near the front.

" _Look at their faces."_ A murmur of anticipation fills the tent. " _It ain't fair, making 'em believe in miracles; there's no miracles in this world."_

Roy LeGrange is helped to the lectern and the hum of the crowd becomes worshipful.

" _Dammit Sam, why'd you bring me to this quack? You've been around this crap long enough. You know it ain't real."_

Dean's doubts spill out in bitter words, but a blind man's ears are sharp and suddenly Dean is embarrassed, ashamed. These people are here because they want to be, because they believe in something, and who is Dean to take that away from them? But it seems Roy LeGrange has been instructed to heal Dean, whether Dean wants to be the chosen one or not.

" _Pick someone else, please man, not me."_

The Reverend insists and Sam isn't letting him back out now, so Dean makes his unsteady way onto the staging.

" _I can't do this. Not in front of all these people. It's not gonna work. Just let me die in peace_."

Sam's face stands out from the crowd like a beacon; it is scared and eager and it's breaking what's left of Dean's heart.

" _It's not gonna work, Sammy, and I don't wanna see the disappointment on your face. Crap…you really believe in this mumbo jumbo, don't you?"_

Then Roy LeGrange's hand is heavy and warm on the side of his head and Dean feels his heart falter, his pulse slow, feels suddenly so sick as everything starts to slide away. His legs give way and he drops abruptly to his knees as his brother's face blurs out of sight.

The Reverend's hand is sucking the life from him; it slips away, as insubstantial as smoke yet more precious than the world's rarest diamond. His mind struggles, the thoughts thick and slow as molasses.

" _Uh…I don't feel so good…Sammy, I'm sorry… I don't think I'm gonna make it man."_

Then everything stops. Just ends.

Then Sam is hauling him upright by the front of his hoodie and Dean feels cold air screeching down his throat and all he can see is a terrible, gaunt face hovering over him and he knows, just knows, that something is terribly wrong.

Layla, it's Layla's place he's taken on the staging. Now Dean knows that life really sucks.

"Why do you deserve to live more than my daughter?" The hate pours out of Mrs Rourke as her eyes drill into Dean's soul and Dean gets it, he does. He's just as good as killed her daughter and he'd feel the same if it was Sam.

Then Sam breaks his news and Dean's mind starts to scream.

" _He died? Whaddya mean Marshall Hall died! Did he die for me, 'cause of me! Don't put that on me, please, not that. It should've been me. You should've just let me die. It was MY time!"_

Dean staggers under the invisible load of guilt that piles upon his shoulders.

" _First I kill Layla, now some random dude, just tryin' to live his life. That's not what we're about. We're meant to SAVE people! I know you didn't mean it, Sam, any of it, but I'm the one gotta live with this!"_

They put it as right as they can and the Reaper takes his revenge on the preacher's wife who tried to hogtie him. But it'll never be right, not really, because someone has died in Dean's place. And now Layla will never be healed.

Layla's forgiveness and the strength of her faith stuns Dean. He knows he doesn't deserve forgiveness. None of it makes any sense to him. Why would some worthless hunter be saved and a girl like Layla get a death sentence?

" _I'm gonna pray for you. I don't think it's gonna do any good, but I'm gonna try."_

Dean is surprised to find that he means it.

He's not surprised at the sense of foreboding that creeps up on him in the days that follow. Something has altered in the delicate balance of the universe, of heaven and hell. Dean Winchester should have died. Someday the price will have to be paid.

.

' _ **Faith' is an episode that really resonated with viewers. For that reason I**_ _ **didn't want to give it the hurt/comfort treatment. It's been done already, and done well. Dean's first thought wrote itself... and the rest just followed.**_

 _ **Thanks for reading. Thank you reviewers, you keep me going.**_

 _ **Love to know your thoughts on this one.**_


	13. Chapter 13: Of broken hearts

**13.**

 **(Route 666)**

 **.**

 _Cape Girardeau, Missouri_

"Why don't you wake me up when it's my turn to drive." It doesn't sound like a question and Dean settles back against the door without waiting for an answer.

The crossed arms and the sunglasses partially obscuring his face give him a defensive air. Sam knows his brother wants to avoid any awkward questions and of course sleeping, or pretending to sleep, is a standard move on the chessboard of their relationship.

Sam has questions he would like to ask, but Sam always has questions he would like to ask so this is nothing new. In turn, Dean doesn't want to answer those questions and this is nothing new either.

Dean is not as hidden from view as he would like to believe. They drive through bars of sunlight and shadow as they pass under the trees; sometimes the light catches the sunglasses just so, and Sam can make out that his brother's eyes are closed. He's not asleep though, at least not yet. The position of his shoulders and the tension in his folded arms is all wrong.

The 'younger brother' in Sam tweaks at the corner of his mouth and pulls it up in a small grin. Big brother, charmer of numerous girls, love 'em and leave 'em Winchester, got dumped. Totally, undeniably dumped. In different circumstances it would be ammunition for weeks, possibly even months.

Of course, the ammunition will never be used, because big brother went and fell in love. And that's a game-changer.

Sam settles more comfortably behind the wheel, leaning his leg up against the door. He daydreams, trying to imagine a scenario where the Impala was still parked outside Cassie's apartment the morning after, and the morning after, and the morning after that.

He can see Cassie in his mind's eye. A little younger, a lot more carefree, just as feisty. 'Younger brother' fades into the background and suddenly the picture alters. Now he sees a young woman, new to maturity and freedom, perhaps a little scared at the thought of commitment, at the strength of her own feelings and the power she wields over this stranger. And Dean is next to her, younger, overwhelmed by this strange thing that is sweeping him along, completely unprepared for the heart wrenching pull of it. Sam thinks that no amount of one night stands would have prepared his brother for the impact of falling in love.

Suddenly Sam wonders just how hard Dean did fall? What drove his brother to break the engrained rules of a lifetime and tell Cassie his deepest secrets?

It's not so funny anymore now and the slight curve of Sam's smile straightens out. He thinks Dean must've really thought he could trust her. He told her what they were, what they did. So Cassie, frightened, annoyed at what appeared to be a poor brush-off, perhaps already looking for a way out, rejected him, called him a freak.

It's bad enough when a guy who wears his heart on his sleeve gets it trampled on occasionally, but when someone keeps theirs locked away and then finally brings it out, only to have it kicked into the trash, that has to be worse. It's another rock on the cairn of incidents that tell Dean he's worthless.

The shapeshifter's choice of the word 'freak' to describe his brother suddenly seems uncomfortably close to the mark.

He wonders if Dean will ever take the risk of being hurt like that again?

Sam shifts, his fingers curling around the wheel as a niggling question rears its head. Dean doesn't share. But after just two weeks of being sure he'd found the one, he opened up and told her everything.

Now Sam considers himself an open person. He's careful, because some things are best left unsaid, but he does share. It occurs to him that, even after months of living together, he never told Jessica anything about the hunting life.

Part of him protests, says he'd always intended to tell her one day...later, much later. Perhaps so much later that a strange story of his past wouldn't spoil what they had built.

Sam's mouth goes dry. He thinks not telling Jessica was his unconscious acceptance of the fact that he would never meet up with Dean, or their father, again. It's a shock to see it laid out in stark mental print.

He glances across at Dean. His brother is finally asleep, head back against the glass and mouth open as he snores lightly. Sam feels the ache of a loss that could have been. One he'd never really considered at the time. One that feels much too close and much too real after Nebraska.

.

Thank you for reading.

Thank you even more for reviewing ;-)


	14. Chapter 14: Co-Dependent

**14\. Co-Dependent**

 **(Set after 'The Benders')**

 **.**

Sam's nightmares lie in layers, with the latest trauma topmost and most often available for midnight viewing. Since Michigan, his nights have been filled with horrific dreams where he's too late to stop Max. Time after time the sound of the shot cracks through the room and Dean just drops. Gone so fast it's incomprehensible. Time after time Sam jerks awake with the nightmare vision of his brother's vacant eyes filling his mind.

In turn, Dean's sleep has been eroded by Sam's suggestion that the demon wanted him for some vile purpose. He doesn't want to believe it, but Max's mother died the same way as Mary and Sam's visions are getting stronger, morphing into something even more worrying, telekinesis. Now Dean is a realist and he can see that a bit of telekinesis would have its uses in the hunting life, but the trouble with gifts like that is they always come at a price. Okay, so Sam was scared. But being scared doesn't enable Joe Average to move heavy cabinets with mind power alone.

They walk away from their encounter with the Benders in a haze of relief and stunned disbelief. Somehow the fact that they were up against humans makes it all so much worse.

It's another one for the horror collection, for them both. Sam being taken by man-hunting freaks, Kathleen's missing brother and the insidious horror creeping out of every nook and cranny of the Benders' home. As they walk the fallout from the last few hours sifts down on top of their existing nightmares, like layers of ash from the remains of a volcanic eruption. It weighs on their clothing, leaves an invisible layer of grime on their skin and a foul taste in their mouth. Because they were the lucky ones who got away.

They've walked for some time and the initial buoyancy of relief has gone. It's still a long way back to town and Sam's foot catches on a raised bump in the road where a root has worked its way across just beneath the surface. Dean is a couple of strides behind him and the scuff, thud, catch of his boots say that he is tired too.

The rumble and squeak of a pick-up truck heralds the approach of a farmer. Now Sam doesn't see any reason why a passerby would pick up two strangers, so he is taken aback by the unexpected kindness when the man stops and offers them a lift. Admittedly he has a large relative in the passenger seat who looks like he could throw Sam, Dean and the pick-up into next week without breaking a sweat. And there's the impressive rack of rifles and other assorted weaponry inside the cab. Perhaps he feels he doesn't have anything to worry about from two scruffy, weary individuals. And he's right, he doesn't; Sam flops into the truck bed with a groan and a grateful wave of his hand and realizes belatedly that Dean is making heavy weather of getting over the tailgate, but it's too late to assist and Dean drops into the rear corner, where he can keep a wary eye on the cab and its occupants.

"Way to go, Sammy," he says, as though Sam had something to do with them getting a lift, when in fact he simply happened to be standing at the side of the road looking miserable.

Sam leans back and gathers his thoughts and tries not to notice Dean staring at him in the way he does when he's almost lost his little brother. He wishes Dean wouldn't look at him like that; it's disconcerting because the dim light hides the expression in his eyes and they remind Sam of vacant looks and bullet holes in the forehead.

It makes him edgy and he pulls one knee into his chest and digs his fingers into it to remind himself that this is real and they've both survived, again.

"Stop it," he says eventually. "Stop looking at me like that man. I'm okay."

Dean is a bit startled. He tilts his head away in embarrassment and then he just looks kind of battered and Sam wishes he hadn't said anything at all.

.

It's raining by the time they get to the car. The water falls heavily out of the clouds and gathers on the Impala, sliding down her glossy skin like silvery teardrops. Dean is changing the plates, just in case, and he looks up at Sam with a pensive expression on his face.

"She was just a kid."

Sam isn't sure where this is going but he plays along.

"Yeah. She's young though so maybe..." The trouble is, he can't envisage a future where Missy Bender gets to live a normal life.

"She never had a chance, right from the start." Dean pauses, troubled. "She woulda killed you and me and not even remembered it tomorrow."

He throws the screwdriver in the back of the car and in no time at all they're away, running under a weeping sky for the nearest county line before someone decides to put some real effort into finding them.

They drive until they've had enough of driving and in all that time they can't find even a skeevy motel with a vacancy. Eventually Dean pulls off behind a thin screen of bushes and the growl of the Impala is stilled. He kneads his forehead with the fingers of one hand and then drags his hand down his face, momentarily stretching the skin into a carnival mask.

"Guess we're sleeping in the car."

"Wherever," says Sam. "I'm beat."

He sits and stares at the rain on the windshield while Dean gets out and rummages around in the back seat. A minute or two later his brother drops back into the driving seat and jerks a thumb behind him.

"I'll take the front."

It's a concession to Sam's longer legs and he's grateful and already pulling at his door handle when he realizes Dean has the First Aid kit on his lap. He pauses, eyeing his brother suspiciously. "You need some help?"

"I got it."

Dean doesn't seem to be doing anything, so Sam takes the kit off him, fishes out some antiseptic wipes and cleans up his own cuts and grazes.

His brother dry swallows a couple of Tylenol and runs a wipe over the cut above his eyebrow before carefully easing his left arm out of his jacket. And that's when Sam remembers the burn mark on his brother's green shirt and he kicks himself mentally because the shooting of Pa Bender put it right out of his mind.

He peers across the Impala but can only make out a dark mark in the dim light.

"What happened to your shoulder?"

"That crazy ass sonofabitch…" Dean tucks his chin down, trying to get a good look at his shoulder, so Sam misses the rest apart from "poker" but that's enough to prompt a quick stab at the interior light.

Dean turns to him with a disgruntled scowl and Sam sees that the burn goes right through his brother's green shirt, through his t-shirt and has left a black/red mess of scorched flesh.

Sam says something he saves for extreme situations and is outside and has the driver's door open before Dean can protest.

Dean grumbles about the rain marking the interior door panel but consents to swinging his legs out and allowing Sam to pull the green shirt aside. It's not a huge burn, but it's nasty; material has melted into Dean's flesh and Sam has to cut the rest of the dark t-shirt away to clear the area.

"I got it." Dean repeats, but he doesn't sound convincing and Sam doubts his brother's hands are steady enough to use the tweezers and at some point tweezers are going to be needed.

He spends most of the next hour running bottled water and antiseptic wash over the wound and carefully, so very carefully, picking out the bits of charred material with the disinfected tweezers.

Dean's face turns slowly from pale to white to gray. When he starts to sweat and blow though his nose, Sam stands back in time to avoid the spatter of thin bile that Dean deposits between his boots. He lets him hang between his knees for a few moments and then gently palms him back upright.

"Damnit Sam," he says weakly and Sam suddenly wants to hug him because he's had enough of seeing Dean hurt. He won't of course, because that would hurt Dean even more.

It's when he's applying the anti-bacterial dressing and settling his brother on the back seat that he realizes Nebraska was a turning point. He didn't mean for Marshall Hall to die instead of his brother, but if he could go back in time, even with the benefit of foresight, Sam knows he would make the same choice all over again.

The simple fact is, Sam isn't sure he can manage without Dean anymore. And if the look on Dean's face when he found Sam alive at the Bender's house was anything to go by, then Dean can't manage without Sam either.

He wonders uneasily if they've become co-dependent.

.

 ** _Thanks for reading and a huge shower of thanks to the reviewers :-)_**


	15. Chapter 15: The truth always hurts

**15\. The truth always hurts.**

 **(Set after 'Shadow')**

 **.**

When the Winchesters leave Chicago they're walking wounded, or at least they would be if they were walking.

In the space of just a few hours everything has changed.

.

John clamps an old towel to his chest, steers the GMC one-handed as his pain hunches him over the wheel. He needs to run and run hard before he can stop and sew himself back together again. Right now his main priority is putting as much mileage between himself and his boys as possible, before he holes up somewhere to recover, renew his attack.

The demon has his measure. It's had his measure for a long time. The way to John Winchester is through his children.

From the minute he picked up Dean's voicemail, he never had any doubt Chicago was a trap. A trap for him. Even so, with his boys as the bait, he was drawn inexorably to 1435 West Erie. It was the end of Act 1 when he arrived to see Meg falling from the window, but Act 2 nearly saw the demise of them all courtesy of daevas' claws.

Every part of the father in him wants to stay and tend his children, but he leaves them standing in their own blood at the side of the road. Because John Winchester has the demon's measure too and the demon knows it. It's nervous, maybe even scared, and it won't think anything of gutting the young Winchesters and spreading their innards across Chicago to slow John down, slow him down enough to catch him and take him permanently out of the game.

He knows how hard his boys have been looking for him and he knows they've no idea how many times he's nearly given way and gone to them. But it was too dangerous. It's still too dangerous, for them and him. This time it was Dean who made the decision for them all. John saw how much it hurt his eldest to send him away; he's proud of him, of them, for letting him go.

The warm feeling left by Sam's hug is still there. It soothes the gashes in the skin of his chest in a way no medicine ever could. The words Sam and he exchanged years ago were vicious, born out of fear and stubbornness and a desire for freedom. Vicious enough to tear a family apart. They've both regretted them, in their own ways. That hug has gone some way to repairing the rift between them and the fact that a teenage son and a father went separate ways doesn't mean two adult men can't be family again. Because Sam is a man now. He saw it tonight when his boy lit that flare, saw it again when his youngest let go of his belligerence and with a slap of his hand on John's shoulder set his own seal of approval, even be it unwilling, on his father's departure.

He's proud of his boys although he doesn't tell them that enough and he knows it. The real fight is just beginning and they'll all have to play their part. John Winchester just hopes that when it comes down to it, right there at the end, he's got what it takes.

.

Sam is so full of conflicting emotions he doesn't even know which expression is on his face. He suspects the feelings are flickering across his features like a movie reel and he keeps his head turned to the window, trying to ride out the rollercoaster.

There's a huge sense of relief. He's been anticipating and dreading the meeting with his father in equal measures ever since Dean arrived in Stanford. Then suddenly John was just there, filling the room with his intensity. It took Sam's clever words right out of his mouth, left him standing there, waiting as anxiously as a little kid for approval. Then John's dark eyes were focused on him and Sam remembered just how warm they could be; he stepped forwards into the hug, digging himself into the familiar smell and strong grip that was all Dad. He hadn't realized how much he needed that hug. It didn't put everything right between them because adult life is more complicated than that, but it was a start.

Sam feels bitter too, about Meg. Meg who was really a demon in disguise, who took him for a fool at the side of a road and played him good and proper in Chicago, even when he thought he was being clever and was on to her. Turns out Meg was the smart one after all. The Winchesters got away this time, but something tells him they'll be seeing more of Meg before they're finished. There's a tiny thorn of hurt in the bitterness too, because for a little while he really liked her, liked her enough to open up to her about his frustration with Dean. So yes, he's a little hurt, because she lied to him and because those words she took such pleasure in repeating to Dean were never meant for his brother's ears.

Sam risks a glance across the Impala. Dean's profile is stony and blood-streaked. Sam doubts his brother is wasting much time worrying about the words of a demon. Not when he's trying to come to terms with words that came straight out of Sam's mouth. And there, right there, is the other emotion squeezing Sam's chest. Regret. Regret that his brother didn't understand, right from the start, that Sam was only in this for the short haul. Regret that Dean finally opened up and actually said what he was feeling, but Sam couldn't give him the answer he so desperately wanted.

It's no good lying of course, because Sam knows he can't stay in this life. He doesn't want to stay in this life and that's been set in stone in the back of his mind ever since he left Stanford; it's been eating at him even more since he was digging shreds of melted t-shirt out of Dean's shoulder after their encounter with the Benders. He doesn't want to be drawn back in; it's not what his life is meant to be about. He's here until the demon is dead and then he's out for good.

They'll still be a family, they'll keep in touch this time, but things will never be the way they used to be; he's going to make sure of that.

He told his brother straight; he tried to be kind but he told him straight. Sam realizes he's stronger than he thought when it comes to Dean. He stuck to his guns despite the hopeless hurt on his brother's face. It was a relief when Dean broke eye contact and looked away; Sam thought the worst was over. How he withstood the hurt kid that looked back up at him, he'll never know.

.

Dean is numb. The gashes left by the daevas' claws should hurt, but they don't. He can feel the pull of the drying blood against his skin, taste it metallic and sweet in the corner of his mouth, but it doesn't seem to matter too much. The claw marks will be healed and gone long before the gashes in his heart stop bleeding.

Dad was there, at last, right there. And now he's gone again and Dean was the one sent him away. It was the right decision, it was, but it doesn't make it any easier.

Dad is gone and Sam is going. Not right now, but going just the same. Suddenly part of Dean doesn't want to find the demon any more. Because when they do, either it will kill the Winchesters, or the Winchesters will finish the demon once and for all. And then Sam will leave.

It seems there's no getting around that fact. Sammy is leaving. He said so. Every moment is just a countdown to the final moment. Last time the parting was all anger and harsh words and a break for freedom. This time it's a considered, calm, adult decision and deep down Dean knows nothing he can say or do will alter it.

He tried. He's not big on sharing feelings, not real ones anyway. It took everything in him to turn away from that dresser and tell Sam how he really felt. He thinks it might've been the hardest thing he's ever done. But he had to force those words out, because right from the start of the conversation, when Dean's gut was already tying itself in knots, his little brother was just looking forward to a future by himself. He sees Sam's confused expression again in his mind's eye and knows that, up until that moment, his little brother didn't understand at all.

Dean wonders if all along he's been too good at hiding his own feelings?

He saw the pity dawn in Sam's eyes, saw it on his face, but the plea kept spilling out, laying raw Dean's vulnerability as surely as any knife. And it was all for nothing, because Sam doesn't want their family back, not how it used to be. Sam told him so. Told him in calm, kind words and Dean had to duck his face away, because he near as damn it cried right there. But he trod it down and turned it into a frown and he can't afford to think about it anymore right now.

So he flexes his eyebrows and cracks open the gashes on his forehead, just to feel the pain and the warm trickle of blood down his face, because it's better than feeling numb.

.

 _ **Thank you for sticking with these. Really appreciate the reviews, thank you : )**_


	16. Chapter 16: A good place to be

**16\. A good place to be**

 **(A short tag set around 'Hell House')**

 _._

The soporific hum of the laptop's cooling fans causes Sam's eyelids to droop. He blinks hard, is about to shut it down, when his attention is caught by the bright colors of a small cartoon in the corner of the screen. Large yellow letters in looping script hover over the simple pencil-drawn figures.

' _Worrying won't stop the bad stuff from happening, it just stops you enjoying the good.'_

The words stay in his mind long after the screen goes dark; they may well be an unexpected answer to something that's been puzzling him. Although Sam anticipates it every day, there is still no mention of his announcement that he's going back to college when the hunt for the demon is over. Gradually Sam has moved from a state of anxious waiting, to tense anticipation, to puzzled acceptance.

The sounds of late-night revelers in the distance are partially obliterated by the sporadic clatter of the ineffective air conditioning. Sam sits in the darkness, wondering if Dean has put their conversation away, somewhere deep and dark, or if he has simply decided to make the best of their time on the road together, however long that may be.

He makes his way slowly to his bed and is just underneath the covers when the scrape of a key announces Dean's return. The thud of his shoulder against the doorframe and the clatter of the trash can as he nudges it carelessly with his boot indicate that he is fairly inebriated, or possibly completely shitfaced. Sam waits, just in case, although he is sure his assistance will not be needed; Dean has been coming home drunk for years and managed perfectly fine by himself.

He notes with relief that Dean is humming under his breath, which means the evening went well and he is not injured, or at least not injured enough to warrant a loss of humor.

There is a clink of car keys, a thud of one boot but noticeably not the other, then Dean face plants the second bed, still fully clothed. He mutters something unintelligible, roots briefly around underneath his pillow as he settles his knife in position and then goes quiet.

Sam smiles in the darkness. A few hours' peace is actually welcome, because Dean is back to running at full throttle and that means little sleep, constant movement, loud music at inappropriate times, the sort of pranks that end up with itching powder in Sam's underpants and generally exhausting levels of smart-assery. Living with Dean running at full throttle is like trying to stroll through a tornado; you never know which way is up and unexpected bits of debris are likely to hit you without warning.

A small part of Sam sometimes longs for the quiet of Stanford, although it's only a small part, because strolling through Dean-tornadoes was part of his life every day until he left for college. Mostly Sam simply recalls them growing up together, on the road, driving John nuts with their tom-foolery. He's reminded that Dean makes him laugh, a big laugh from right deep down in his guts, like no-one else can.

Being on the road with his big brother is hard work, but for now it's also a good place to be.

.

 _ **There's a big change in mood between the brothers after 'Shadow' and during 'Hell House' but never any reason given in canon. I thought I'd explore that a little…**_

 _ **Thanks for reading. As always, thanks for the reviews, you always keep me writing.**_

 _ **Love hearing from you : )**_


	17. Chapter 17: Big Brother

**17\. Big brother**

 **(Set around 'Something Wicked')**

 _._

They leave the Lone Star State behind them. It's been a strange few days. They've met some wannabe paranormal investigators and discovered that, thanks to the power of the internet, something nasty can be imagined into existence. Now that's a scary concept, but not quite as scary as the naivety of the investigators.

They settle back into the rhythm of life on the move and for a brief time things are almost peaceful, as much as life can be when you throw together two Winchesters, one Impala and the open road. At least the prank war that's run riot for days in the Winchester world finally loses impetus, for the moment.

.

The arrival of co-ordinates from their father sends them to Fitchburg, Wisconsin and suddenly fun and temporary tranquility are firmly on the back-burner, because in Fitchburg one of Dean's nightmares comes back to haunt him.

"He wants us to finish the job," says Dean, and his face is all sick and pale looking and Sam knows straight away from the set of his shoulders that his brother is hiding something, something about a fugly getting away from Dad in Fort Douglas, Wisconsin, right back when they were kids.

It turns out they're hunting a shtriga that's sucking the breath of life out of local youngsters. Now Sam can't remember them ever hunting a shtriga before, but it's very clear that Dean remembers it all too well; in fact if Sam had to put money on it he'd bet the shtriga was almost at the head of the list of monsters that Dean hates.

The sheer intensity with which Dean detests the shtriga and what it's doing to the kids of Fitchburg seems to eat at him like acid dripping onto metal, and this in turn eats at Sam, because whatever it is that Dean is hiding, it's something bad.

Eventually Sam has had enough of the secrets and tackles him outright. Dean is, of course, unwilling at first but then he starts talking and Sam hears a tale of a kid left to care for his younger brother, a kid who stepped out for a few minutes and came back to find a shtriga snacking on his sibling.

Now Sam's large physical presence is proof enough that the sibling survived, courtesy of the timely return of their Dad, and he doesn't remember anything about the experience. The trouble is, Dean was the kid left in charge and the guilt from that night sits as heavily on his broad shoulders now as it did when he was less than half the size and weight.

Dean can't even meet his eyes when he admits that Dad looked at him different after that.

"He gave me an order and I didn't listen, I almost got you killed."

Sam can only imagine the devastating effect their Dad's loss of trust would've had on his big brother.

Suddenly Sam understands Dean's over-eager, almost slavish adherence to direct orders from their father. Because the one time he didn't listen, he nearly lost his little Sammy.

Sam thinks that perhaps John knows something altered between him and his eldest on that long ago night? Sam knows his father lives with guilt every day and Sam has come to understand a lot about guilt since Jess burned on the ceiling. Perhaps that's why John sent Dean to Fitchburg, to settle a personal score and maybe ease some of the burden.

.

Sam overhears the conversations Dean has with Michael, the kid who lives at the motel. He listens to them talk, big brother to big brother, and he sees the lengths Michael goes to in an attempt to protect his own little brother. Sam has never looked at it from the outside before, but he gets it now, what makes Dean tick, what makes him so over-protective. Sam finds himself grateful and awed and also kind of sad that Dean must've gone through life never feeling he was the most important person, not even to himself.

Sam understands a little more now why Dean was torn in two when Sam left for college. It wasn't just about Sam going or Dean staying. It wasn't just about the responsibility Dean felt towards their father, towards the hunt. It was having to cut Sam loose and let his little brother go somewhere he couldn't watch over him.

He thinks the shtriga tried to steal his life force, but what it did steal from Dean was almost as important.

.

In the end, they trap the shtriga and Dean finishes it, once and for all. Michael's little brother, Asher, and the other kids are saved. Sam can almost see some of the weight of guilt lift away from Dean's shoulders. None of the responsibility though; he wears that big brother mantle as an attachment to his soul.

As they pack up, Sam finds himself pondering over all the little things that Dean does that make Sam know he's cared for, things like ordering the right type of pizza and letting him have first shower on the days when they're cold and wet and it really matters. It's the Winchester way. You don't say you care for someone, you show them. Just like Sam shows Dean when he pretends to be tired because Dean is weary of driving and when he makes sure the First Aid kit has plenty of the type of painkillers that don't make Dean nauseous.

They watch Michael leave with his mother, heading for the hospital to see little Asher. Michael is happy and excited but Sam feels a pang of sorrow for him, because Michael isn't innocent any more; he'll always know there are bad things out there in the dark.

Sam looks at Dean across the top of the Impala and he feels the warmth of the sun on the metal beneath his fingers and it does nothing at all to warm the cold space in his center.

"He'll never be the same, you know? Sometimes I wish..."

"What?" Dean squints at him, worried because Sam sounds sad.

"I wish I could have that kinda innocence."

Dean thinks about that, considering, weighing his words so they come out slow and somber, so Sam understands he really means it.

"If it means anything, sometimes I wish you could too."

Sam knows that if he still had that kind of innocence then it would mean Dean and Dad had left him in some nice stranger's home a long time ago. It means Dean would be hunting alone, would be alone now with no-one to do the big things like watch his back or do the little things like buying the right painkillers. But Dean is a big brother so sometimes, despite all that it would mean, despite the fact he would lose his little brother, he still wishes Sam had that innocence.

Now that goes some way to warming the cold space inside of Sam.

Winchesters aren't good at saying they care, but Sam reckons that's Dean saying "I love you."

.

 _ **It's a strange thing how I re-watch these episodes and then a few days or a week later, suddenly, what I want to say comes to me.**_

 _ **Thank you so much for reading and for all your kind reviews. It's really good to hear from you. ; )**_


	18. Chapter 18: All grown up

**18\. All grown up**

 **(Set after 'Provenance' and around 'Dead man's blood')**

 _._

It's in upstate New York that Sam takes a major step on the journey of "learning to survive after Jess".

Art dealer's daughter Sarah is a nice girl and surprisingly cool with the whole hunting the supernatural thing. As Dean reminds his brother, when they find themselves at a loose end some weeks later, she's also "smokin'". He's quick to offer a trip back to upstate New York so Sam can renew his acquaintance.

Now it was a major step but Sam isn't ready to go back yet, although he doesn't completely discount the possibility that he might one day. So he declines the offer, but with a smile and a warmth in his eyes that Dean hasn't seen in a while.

'Sam and chicks' promptly slides down Dean's mental list of things to worry about. He accepts the decision for what it is, Sam taking things at his own pace.

With that settled, it's time to get on with the job and within minutes fate throws them the name of Daniel Elkins.

They don't know it when they set out for Colorado, but vampire victim Elkins is an important player in the game of their lives, although they'll never actually get to meet him. It seems he was a long-time hunter, an ex-friend of their father and most significantly the last keeper of a special gun made in 1835 by Samuel Colt himself.

Now it's strange thing how you can go for weeks, months even, with nothing of any great import occurring and then within the space of a couple of days everything alters. One thing is for sure, changes never come easy.

There's a sharp rap on the car window and just like that, Dad is back. It seems Elkins' death is the lure that's bright enough to draw him out of whatever deep, dark pool he's been hiding in for so long. John needs his boys to help get the Colt and he wants to run things the way he always has, but his boys are all grown up now and they've both got minds of their own. It's bound to cause friction and the flames from that friction bring about a shift in boundaries none of them are expecting.

Sam doesn't understand why they're being kept in the dark, why it's all 'need to know'. He's changed since Jess. These days he actually wants to be a part of Team Winchester, at least for now, just so long as it is a team, so long as Dad tells it to them straight and lets them in on the secrets. The familiar frustrations of Sam's teenage years reappear as though they've never been gone. Within hours, cracks open up and let out a lava flow of questions, accusations, rage. His father responds in true John Winchester fashion, upping the levels of control and turning requests into instructions into orders.

Dean knows he can handle himself but hey, if Dad still wants to be in command it's okay, if that's what it takes to get the job done. It is okay, really. He keeps telling himself he's okay with it...but sonofabitch it's not fair, not after all they've been through. But Dean's keeping his mouth shut, for now. So Dean tries his best, he really does, to head trouble off at the pass, but Sam thunders right on over him. Little brother has the bit in his teeth and no-one is stopping him now.

This butting of heads is the same old thing, all over again, but now Sam's an adult and he's somehow got to be bigger than Dad and Dean finds himself stuck in the middle again, literally in the middle, in the center of some forsaken blacktop in the middle of nowhere.

"This is why I left in the first place."

"You walked away!"

Dean hates those words.

.

Now thanks to Dean's interference, somehow the near fatal bust-up blows over and Sam and John end up having a heart to heart, as much as Winchesters ever do. Sam gets to hear about a college fund and that's kind of nice. Then John opens up and tells him just why he didn't want Sam to leave for college. Now Sam has heard this from Dean, the fact that Dad was scared he wouldn't be able to protect him so far away, but somehow it means so much more when the words are coming out of Dad's lips on little puffs of whiskey-scented breath and his eyes are all warm and dark with affection. He wishes Dad had told him at the time. It probably wouldn't have stopped him going; Sam is obstinate and he knows it. But it would've made a difference to how he'd gone, and more importantly, how he'd stayed gone.

Of course, it turns out the heart to heart has only altered so much. John still tries to ditch them before the final trade for the Colt goes down. Sam argues their case with passion. It's not obstinacy this time; it's because he feels it in his blood that they need to work together from now on.

They're both shocked when Dean finally speaks up, because Dean doesn't defy Dad, except he does today. He steps right up, man to man, and tells John straight. Sam and Dean, shoulder to shoulder. He can see from his Dad's face that the defiance hurts him, but there's something else there in his eyes. For a moment Dean thinks it might have been respect.

John sticks to his original plans and leaves his boys behind but it's a good thing they disobey him, because otherwise his hunt and his life would've ended right there and then, courtesy of a vampire. John's boys save his life and the elder Winchester is man enough to admit that it's time for a change. Dean's defiance has shocked him and Sam's right, they need to work together because they're stronger together. His children will always be his children but they're men too. Deep down, John knows he may not be strong enough to take down the demon by himself. He's not going to survive it anyway; he came to terms with that a long time ago, but he does want to end it. It's working as a family that won the battle with the vampires and secured the Colt and it is family that'll have the best chance of defeating the demon.

.

So the Colt, made by Samuel's own hands in 1835, is finally in John Winchester's possession. To say John wanted that Colt is the understatement of the millennia. After all, it's quite possibly the only thing on earth that will enable him to fulfill his life's remaining ambitions of avenging his wife's death and making sure the demon can never get to his children. In short, legend says the special bullets made by Samuel Colt, shot from that particular gun, will kill anything, even a yellow-eyed demon. Now they just have to hunt down the demon.

The Impala follows John's GMC at a respectable distance, that is, far enough behind to react but not so far behind as to become detached. Dean is driving. After Sam's temper tantrum when he overtook Dad and slid the Impala broadside across the road, it's not likely anyone but Dean will be driving any time soon.

It's a brand new day in the Winchester world. They're all working together, by common agreement, with the aim of taking down Azazel once and for all. It doesn't seem real and it's been far too long in coming. Thinking it over, Dean puffs some air out of the corner of his mouth and shakes his head slightly in disbelief.

"What?" Sam is watching him with earnest eyes as though he's expecting some soul-baring revelation.

Not sure what his brother is anticipating, Dean telegraphs his confusion at the question with a quick movement of his eyebrow, but Sam is not pleased with the response and imparts this information by thinning his lips. "You were doing that head shake thing again."

"Seriously? " Dean snorts with dry amusement. "Don't go overthinkin' it."

Sam waits for a heartbeat or two, then changes tactics, letting himself slide deeper into the seat and resting his forearm on the door.

"It's a good thing, us hunting as a family."

Dean sends a quick glance in his direction. The statement seems innocent enough. "Yeah, it is." A wry grin creeps up the side of his face. "Kinda took me by surprise when Dad backed down like that."

Sam grins back at him, genuine amusement spreading to his eyes. In the space of the last few hours they've defied the rules of a lifetime, challenged the alpha Winchester and then gone on to save his life by virtue of disobeying orders. "Your face, when Dad came back...you looked like a kid caught with a hand in the cookie jar."

"Yeah." The grin stays on Dean's face. "Thought I'd be running laps for a week."

Suddenly serious, Sam straightens a little, the humor leaching away from his features. "You don't have to do that anymore. Dad doesn't have the right."

Dean shrugs, starts hunting through radio stations, pausing briefly here and there to listen to a few bars before twirling the dial again. Sam isn't sure whether it's a brief snatch of a familiar country song or just the angle of Dean's profile that brings a memory floating through his mind. Suddenly he feels uncomfortable, guilty even.

Dean picks up immediately on the alteration in his brother's posture. It's not that Sam moves much, it's more a minor rearrangement that subtly flags up discomfort, but not of a physical kind. There's no need to question it; if Sam wants to share something it'll be out in the open soon enough. So Dean assumes a nonchalant front of finding a half-decent station, his eyes fixed on the blacktop unrolling in front of the Impala as though it holds the answer to all the mysteries of the universe.

Apparently it doesn't. At least not for Sam.

"Dean?"

" _Here we go_." Dean firms his jaw a little, readying himself for whatever is coming. "Uh huh?" he grunts, trying not to seem too interested.

"It was like that a lot, wasn't it?"

Dean squints quickly across the Impala. "You're gonna have to give me more than that."

"Me and Dad…fighting. You in the middle. I remember you always being in the middle." Sam is watching him carefully, far too carefully.

"It's my job right, looking after my pain in the ass little brother." Dean tries to deflect it with a smirk, but if the thunderclouds gathering on Sam's brow are anything to go by, there's a storm coming, one Dean needs to avoid.

"Why'd you do that?" Sam waits a second and then clarifies it, just so there's no mistake. "Why'd you always play the peacemaker?" He thinks it's a reasonable question, after all, it's not as though peacemaker is a normal part of Dean's nature.

Dean wants to ignore him, but there's a tone in Sam's voice he recognizes as being the one his brother uses when something is really bothering him. He needs to answer, but not really answer at all. So Dean sighs, shrugs again, making the leather of his jacket creak a little against the seat back. "Wasn't gonna let you tear each other to pieces there, Sam."

" _Couldn't let that happen…"_ thinks Dean. _"Not when you're all I've got."_ He swallows, mouth suddenly dry, heart beginning to hammer. It had always started the same way. Dad setting down the rules, Sam not agreeing with the rules. Didn't matter which one of them was in the right, it would escalate. Dean would hover, tense, feeling sick to his stomach in case this was the time it got out of hand and his world was torn apart, until he couldn't stand it anymore and pushed his way in there, right between them, trying to calm it down so they could all go on being a family afterwards.

It had happened again, hours before. Sam and Dad face to face in the center of that lonely stretch of road, that familiar swoop of dread in Dean's gut. Dean's plea of "Stop it. Stop it! That's enough!" unheard, unwanted because his family were screaming over his head, making Dean Winchester, every inch of his six foot one and every pound of his one eighty pounds, feel like a little kid, all over again. Sometimes he wondered if they even knew he was there.

They'd snarled and spat at other some more and then retreated to their respective vehicles, leaving Dean in the middle of the blacktop, wondering why they couldn't just get on with the job without all the aggravation.

"Terrific."

His voice had fallen into empty air. Nothing in the trees beside the road had been interested in his opinion either. He'd gone after Sam, flopping into the passenger seat, thinking he'd better not hang around in the road too long in case they forgot about him and just drove off.

Dean finds there is nothing more he can say right now that won't reveal far too much. So he reaches out, ready to turn up the music. Sam wants more, he knows he does, but Dean just can't give it to him.

"Don't sweat it, Sammy. I can handle it."

The dial spins and music fills the car, loud enough to rattle the speakers and make Sam's face screw up in disgust.

Truth is, if Dean Winchester had a list of things that scared him most, Dad and Sam fighting would be right at the top.

.

 _ **It's been a long time coming…apologies. It was unexpectedly difficult to write a tag for these episodes. Let me know what you think?**_

 _ **Thanks for reading : )**_

 _ **Many thanks to reviewers of the last chapter: Blossom9, stedan, waitingforAslan, bagelcat1, ngregory763, cmr2014, Perenne Allegro and Guest.**_


	19. Chapter 19: The war begins

**19\. The war begins**

 **(Set around 'Salvation')**

 **.**

It's a hard day for Sam when he finds out that if it wasn't for him the yellow-eyed demon would never have come calling on the Winchesters in Lawrence, would never have dropped by in Palo Alto.

It doesn't make any difference when Dean and Dad tell him it's not his fault. Nothing will ever, ever take away the feeling of guilt.

Mom died in agony because the demon wanted baby Sam. Jess, poor innocent Jess, she was doomed the day college boy Sam smiled back, all shy and blushing behind his bangs.

Sam wants to kill that demon, wants Azazel annihilated, destroyed, erased from history. Right now, he wants it more than anything.

.

The Winchesters talk strategy, lay their plans, narrow the hunt down. They might as well have saved their time, because Azazel is bringing the war to them.

Meg is back. She makes a call on Pastor Jim, long-standing friend of the Winchesters. He dies for the privilege of being the warning shot. It's a shot that rocks the Winchesters to the core.

In the midst of the uproar, Sam gets a vision and there's no hiding it from Dad, not when it involves Azazel. John tries desperately to hide the terror in his eyes; his worst fears are coming true. He prays to anything that will listen that his sons can't see that terror, not yet.

Meg wastes no time in firing the devastating second shell of the offensive and Caleb dies choking on his own blood.

Now it seems Meg wants a deal. The Colt in exchange for sparing everyone else they ever knew or cared about. So John goes to Lincoln to trade as instructed, but he takes a fake Colt with him. It's tempting death and all he can hope to do is buy the boys some time because now, thanks to Sam's vision, they know in advance where Azazel is going to be.

So quite unexpectedly John hands the job of killing the demon over to his sons. He never thought it would go down this way, he thought he'd be in on the final showdown, but suddenly he's just desperate for it to be finished, for all their sakes.

The boys act on Sam's vision; it's a success when they rescue Monica and her family from her burning home.

It's an absolute disaster. There he is. At last. Azazel. Outlined in flame and smoke. And they can't get to him.

.

Dad's cell rings and rings…and rings. He doesn't answer.

Dean paces the motel room like a caged leopard, every muscle, every tendon taut with anxiety. Something is terribly wrong. He knows it as sure as he knows the earth is beneath his feet.

Behind him Sam is a molten mass of rage and inadequacy. It twists his features, curls his hands into fists. The demon had been right there. If he'd run into the flames…if Dean had let him…

"If you had just let me go in there, I could've _ended_ all this!"

They both know he would've died in the attempt. But it seems Dean is the only one who gives a rat's ass. He meets Sam's willingness to sacrifice himself with intense opposition.

His little brother's impotent fury spills over his lips. "What the hell are you talking about, Dean! We've been searching for this demon our whole lives. It's the only thing we've ever cared about!"

"Sam, I wanna waste it. I do. Okay? But it's not worth dying over."

Dean's response is so earnest, so far from anything Sam expected, that it simply pours fuel on the flames of his rage. Dean's lack of anger, the desperation in his tone, it doesn't make any kind of sense to his younger brother. How can it, after a lifetime of hunting this evil?

Then Dean says it, just out and says it, and Sam simply can't believe his ears.

"I mean it. If hunting this demon means getting yourself killed then I hope we never find the damn thing!"

"That thing killed Jess. That thing killed Mom!"

They're _gone_ , Dean tells him, and they're _never_ coming back. And Sam's big brother has never lied about anything that important.

A tiny part of Sam's mind registers that beneath the power of his fury Dean feels small, light even, as though his muscular strength has dried out to a husk. He hurls his brother into the wall, hard, and that same tiny part of his brain informs him that Dean will not be pleased, because older brothers don't like being thrown against walls.

Dean's mouth opens a little, a silent expression of protest or maybe of pain. Sam looms menacingly over him, his fingers digging into Dean's arms with supernatural power; he is torn, wanting to slam his brother through the wall, already wanting to apologize because the hurt on Dean's face is unmistakable.

Something bad has happened to Dad. A slow, sick slide in Dean's guts tells him it's true. And Sammy wants to sacrifice himself.

So Dean doesn't struggle, doesn't fight. The hazel eyes glaring into his are all fire and fury, only the blue bloom in Sam's irises indicative of the other, calmer Sam hiding somewhere inside.

Dean doesn't care that his brother's fingers dig so deep into his muscles that they curl beneath muscle and press cruelly on bone. His self-control is slipping perilously close to the brink. Something inside begins to crumble, crushed by the force of his sibling's anger, by the venom in Sam's furious " _Don't you say that!"_ Hot breath tainted with last night's garlic puffs against Dean's cheek. He can't do this anymore; Dean is about to implode and what's left won't be recognizable. He is losing it, one strangled breath at a time.

"Sam look. The three of us, that's all we have...and it's all I have."

Dean's broken admission is so quiet, his voice so ragged, that Sam pauses, the flames of his rage faltering.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm barely holding it together man...and without you or Dad..."

For the first time ever Sam sees, really sees, the vulnerability hidden at the core of his brother's smart ass exterior.

Suddenly Sam is aware of the texture of the blue shirt beneath his fingers, the rough denim worn smooth by use; he sees with horror the tell-tale quiver in his brother's lip. Sam drags in air, shocked, bringing in a flood of familiar aftershave and something that is purely Dean, has always been Dean, since they were small.

Dean stares up at him, his eyes unguarded, wounded; Sam catches a glimpse, just for a moment, of his brother's soul and it is naked and shivering.

Sam's fingers loosen their grip, the blue spreading out across his irises as his eyes fill with tears. There's a tremble beneath his hands. Dean is not fighting. At least not with Sam.

Sam lets go, steps away.

Dean breathes, in and out, wondering when such a simple act got to be so difficult. He forces the black spots away from his vision, becomes aware of the ruck of the cloth disturbed around his shoulders, the burn where fingers recently pressed. He's glad of the sensation; it anchors him and the wall holds him up.

"Dad. He should have called by now. Try him again."

There are tears in Sam's voice, so Dean raises his 'phone, but it's Meg who answers.

"You boys really screwed up this time. You're never going to see your father again."

.

 _ **Salvation was such a well-written and beautifully acted episode that I can only hope my tag does it some justice.**_

 _ **Love to know what you think.**_

 _ **Really hope these tags have inspired some of you to 'rewind to the beginning' and watch those early episodes all over again.**_

 _ **Final episode of Series 1 is up next…watch this space!**_

 _ **Thanks for reading and extra thanks to reviewers of the last chapter: bagelcat1, Colbie15, ngregory763, stedan, Nancy, Blossom9 and cmr2014.**_


	20. Chapter 20: Devil's Trap

**20\. Devil's Trap**

 **(Season one finale.)**

Dean's thoughts are in italics.

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _wooden floor...splinters...nasty ass things_

"Dean?"

 _Sam's upset?_

"We've gotta get you up kiddo."

 _Dad's voice_

 _Don't you let it kill me…Dad please_

 _I said that, before…_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

"Hey buddy, hey! Stay with me okay?"

 _did I pass out?_

 _that's Dad…but Dad's hurt_

 **"Dad? You...'kay?"**

 _M'voice…somethin's wrong_

"I'll be fine son."

 _Sam's feet... big...don' tread on me Sammy_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

"Dean! Stay awake."

 _Yeah, yeah, yeesh._

"We're gonna have to move you now son. It's gonna hurt a little."

 _Dad's hand...Sam's...bloody fingers on m'shirt all wet…red, crap, really kinda liked this blue shirt_

 _DON'T! STOP!_

 _Uhh_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _cold air…cold_

 _ **HURTS**_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

"Dad!"

"Just keep going Sammy. We've gotta get him in the car."

"He's really hurt Dad."

"I know son."

 _Sam's crying, why's Sam..._

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

"Dean. Don't do that buddy, please."

 _who's makin' that noise?_

 _is that ME?_

 _please don't let that be me, not in front of Dad and Sam._

"Shh, nearly there."

 _SONOFABITCH!_

"Dean? Hey!"

 _that friggin' hurts!_

"Shit!"

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _Sam?_

 _You look kinda back to front dude... 'cause that little mole there, it's on that side and it should be on the other side. It's always been on the other side._

 _kinda weird, twilight zone._

"Keep breathin' in and out for me son, in and out."

 _yeah, 'kay_

 _In…_

 _Jeez that h hurts..._

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _Sam's drivin'...why is Sam drivin' my car?_

 _too fast...careful, back end slipped then...what's the goddamn rush anyway?_

 _breathe out…_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _Where's Dad? He's hurt._

"Right here son."

 _In... Uhh_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _Shotgun. Dad's shotgun_

 _Sam's drivin'_

 _but he's all back to front_

 _Out..._

 _I freakin' love this song_

 _In...little sip of air...HURTShurtshu…_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _Dad's okay..._

 _he's pissed at Sa…_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _why's blood so hot when it's outside y'skin? Sam'd know_

… _there's a lot outside_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _In..._

 _did I miss an out?_

 _I think he broke me, Dad. Dad?_

 _Out..._

 _You need them more than they need you._

 _Don't SAY that you yellow-eyed freak. Please don't say that..._

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _In..._

 _can't move_

 _Sam in the mirror_

 _gotta keep looking at Sam...bad luck not to...steppin' on cracks on the sidewalk tha's bad_

 _Out..._

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _baby_

 _mess...sorry_

 _In..._

 _crap...please make it st..._

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _In...or out_

 _I dunno_

 _It's so fuckin' cold_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _Help, I'm chokin'…blood…thick throat, tongue…spit, can't, push it over m'lip, tongue too big_

 _my face, red blood, window like a mirror_

 _I don't look so good_

 _don't feel good…_

 _gotta be in…is it?_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _Out, or in_

 _don' wanna do either…tired_

 _good to be in baby_

 _we're all together again…that's so friggin' awesome_

 _but I wanna lie down_

 _no! don't move…whole shit load of hurt_

 _hurts too much_

 _am I gonna END here…in the back seat…I started here, Dad said_

 _Watch those bumps Sammy!_

 _OH GOD_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _Is there? God? If there's demons…_

 _Hey you, you listenin'? You look after Sammy and m'Dad, y'hear…please?_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _Keep drivin' Sam_

 _think you're gonna haveta hurry up_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _this sucks big time_

 _I want it to stop now_

 _please_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _Sam, dude…I love ya little brother_

 _shit, chick flick_

… _they don't need you. Not like you need them_

 _that's what he said_

 _is that true?_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _Dad?_

 _sit in the back wi'me_

 _I don't wanna be here by myself..._

 _hurts so much_

 _please_

 _make it stop_

 _please Dad_

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _SAM!_

 _TRUCK! TRU..._

 _""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""_

 _._

 _ **The end of series 1.**_

 _ **So…here it is, final episode.**_

 _ **It's been a labor of love, but I really enjoyed writing it and hopefully some of you enjoyed reading it : )**_

 _ **It would be awesome to hear from you and know what you thought of it.**_

 _ **Will there be a 'Rewind, series 2'? mmm maybe…**_

 _ **Regular reviewers – thank you so much!**_

 _ **Special thanks for reading and for the reviewers of chapter 19: bagelcat1, ngregory763, Blossom9, stedan and CMR2014.**_


End file.
